Bands having their U.S. tour plans scuttled by immigration problems is nothing new. In 2011, the Guardian ran a report about "the red tape that stops UK bands playing SXSW." Brooklyn Vegan alone has six pages of news posts tagged "visa issues," dating back 9 years. Even Adele had to cancel a 2009 SXSW appearance for these reasons.

But in the current political climate, more media attention is focused on these issues. It's difficult to determine how many smaller artists in years past have faced similar situations to Soviet Soviet, United Vibrations, Massive Scar Era, and ELOQ. It's possible that this is business as usual. But it's also possible that even though the White House's latest travel ban doesn't go into effect until this Thursday, March 16, the President's immigration philosophy is already having a trickle-down effect, as some of these bands believe.

Soviet Soviet wrote on Facebook on Friday that they arrived in the U.S. with a letter from their American label, an invitation from SXSW, and authorization to travel in America via the Visa Waiver Program. The band said that officers interrogated them for hours before denying them entry to the country, handcuffing them, and putting them in jail for the night. They were put on a plane back to Italy. “We were relieved to fly back home and distance ourselves from that violent, stressful and humiliating situation,” they wrote.

The problem seems to have been that Soviet Soviet were unaware that they had the wrong of paperwork necessary for the kinds of performances they were scheduled to play in the U.S, which included shows other than SXSW. NPR Music has a good explanation of the situation here.

United Vibrations is a London-based quartet consisting of brothers Kareem, Yussef, and Ahmad Dayes, as well as Wayne Francis. In a statement, their management said that the band's SXSW trip was "cancelled due to last minute amendments to the artist’s visa waivers." The statement continued, "As the band themselves, who are all UK citizens, and have no criminal records, the only conclusion is that the U.S. Government is actively discriminating against ordinary and decent individuals based on their heritage and/or identity. This behavior is a disgrace and an infringement of civil liberties."

The band themselves posted the following on Facebook:

ELOQ tweeted that he was denied entry into the country “even though I was informed by SXSW I had the right visa.” He also wrote that he was handcuffed and kept in a jail cell for 23 hours. “Any outside of US artists playing @SXSW be very careful,” he wrote, “This is NOT fun!”

In a longer Facebook post, ELOQ elaborated on his experience. "Actually apart from the EXTREME boredom of having nothing to do, not knowing the time, and not sleeping well, it was all in all just a cool story to tell now!" he wrote.

The post-hardcore band Massive Scar Era—whose members are based both in Vancouver, British Columbia and Cairo, Egypt—shared a video on Facebook saying they were denied entry into the United States, as well, NPR notes. Like Soviet Soviet, Massive Scar Era seem to have been told that they were carrying the wrong visas needed for their tour, though they claim to have used the same visa to play SXSW previously. And like United Vibrations, Massive Scar Era also questioned if they were denied entry because of their ethnicity.