For me (not OP) a clear example I can give from a collage of my past three visits: arrive at JFK, get in the immigration queue, heavily armed agents walking around, some ICE agents looking tough surrounding the area, someone is directing the queue like we are cattle.

Get to the immigration officer, answer questions, get a cold stare a few times looking at me and my passport, unpleasantly asked why do I have two passports (I'm a dual citizen), told I don't look Swedish (of course, I'm naturalised), get told to wait, they leave to get someone else to check something, two immigration officers start shuffling my passport, wait while no one talks to me or acknowledge I'm there, passport stamped and I get told to "move".

Get my bags, and out of the terminal, on the walk through the terminal there's another 15-20 officers with rifles strutting around, get out of the terminal and there are two massive armoured cars from NYPD parked up front, more cops looking a bit tough.

It's an overwhelming presence of "security" everywhere, signs plastered with messages about how illegal stuff will be punished (littering, leaving your bags unattended, smoking, every message seems to say something about "under penalty of the law").

I think if you live with that all the time it's easy to filter out the noise but there's an eery feeling of oppression all around, like a boot is just waiting the right moment to stomp on you.

If we had had those guys on 9/11 maybe they would have put a bullet on each terrorist forehead and we would all be happy these days around September.

But really it’s only like that at borders. Just watch the videos of all the foreigners loving on the USA and tearing up when they had to go back to their countries after the World Cup.

Maybe Sweden is different from every other country I’ve visited in Europe…but having traveled quite extensively in the EU, most countries I’ve been to don’t feel much different than the US.

Very immigration officer I’ve ever interacted with has been chilly, it’s not some uniquely American thing.

Pretty much every rail station I went through in Europe had extremely (to my eyes) heavily armed guards standing around. I was also asked to present my passport on several occasions. At one Italian station, it happed twice within a few minutes. I’ve been on multiple trains where some flavor of police comes on, checks people’s papers, and then grab some guy and escort him off at the next stop.