According to a Foreign Policy article by historian Julia Harte, author of "Americans Without Borders," Worthy was the first and only journalist prosecuted under that provision, despite dozens of white Americans having re-entered the country without passports for various reasons since the law's enactment. Worthy, a Black reporter known for muckraking, had been without a passport since 1957, when he traveled to China in defiance of a U.S. travel ban.
Worthy was a Nieman and Ford Foundation fellow who had reported from Indonesia, South Africa, Czechoslovakia and even became the first U.S. broadcaster to air news from Moscow since the start of the Cold War. His prosecution, Harte contends, illustrates how the Kennedy administration selectively enforced immigration rules to silence a journalist seen as challenging Cold War foreign policy.
The article draws a direct line from Worthy's case to more recent efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on dissent, suggesting that the precedent set in the 1960s has enabled successive governments to use arcane statutes to target political opponents, particularly those of color.