British tourist issues sincere warning after being locked up by ICE for six weeks
A British tourist who spent six weeks locked up by ICE has been warning others who have been thinking about visiting the US at the moment.
Karen Newton, 65, had a tourist visa to the US for her trip through California, Nevada, Wyoming and Montana before entering Canada with her husband Bill.
Having set off in July last year, her trip through America came to a halt on 26 September when they were trying to cross the border into Canada and were told by Canadian officials they didn't have the right paperwork.
The Guardian reports that Bill's US visa had expired while Karen's was still valid and she said she was 'worried for him', but the retired grandmother ended up handcuffed and driven for 12 hours to be detained in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centre.
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"Don’t go – not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control over there. There’s no accountability. They don’t seem to need a reason for detaining you," is her warning to anyone considering visiting the US at the moment.
When Karen and her husband were turned around that the Canadian border they offered to pay for flights home, but US officials 'weren't interested' and they were taken to an office at around 10:30am and made to wait there until it was night.
She told The Guardian: "It was scary. You have no way of knowing what’s going to happen. It got darker and darker. And then other agents turned up with all these chains and handcuffs."
The couple were shackled and put in a vehicle, driven to a border patrol station and held there for three days in a cell without beds, they had to sleep on mats on the floor, Karen said she was 'very nervous and frightened the whole time' and was 'chilled to the bone'.
She was then told she'd broken the terms of her tourist visa by helping her husband pack for their trip.
They were offered 'self-removal', a process where the US government will pay for flights and offer $1,000 for those who leave voluntarily, with Karen telling The Guardian an agent told her 'because of the special relationship the US has with the UK – it will be over very quickly' and they agreed to go.
That was day three of 42 of her detention.
Put in shackles again, Karen and Bill were taken to a detention facility which the grandmother said was 'really a prison'.
"Prison would actually be better, because if you’re in prison, you get a sentence – they tell you how long you are going to be there," she said.
Separated from her husband, she was put in a cell with bunk beds and asked if she was able to climb a ladder to a top bunk which she wasn't, so a guard who told her they were fed up with 'this crap' took her to another cell where someone else was on the bottom bunk and told her 'your choice is either the top bunk or the floor'.
For the next month she slept on a thin mattress on the floor.
Some of the staff she found to be 'nice enough' and one of them was British with them saying they couldn't understand why she was being detained.
Karen said she was told by 'multiple sources' that ICE agents are paid a bonus for every person they detain, saying they had 'all the incentive in the world to find a reason – any reason – not to let someone go'.
A representative for ICE denied this and told The Guardian: "Bonuses for ICE officers are not based on arrest or detention numbers.
"Pay and bonuses for ICE officers are administered in accordance with office of personnel management policy.
"ICE officers risk their own safety day in and day out because they took an oath to enforce the nation’s immigration laws, not to make large sums of money."
On 6 November the door to her cell opened and they told her she was being released, she was given back her own clothes but it was hours before she was reunited with her husband.
They were again shackled to be driven to Seattle-Tacoma international airport and put on a plane back to the UK, their luggage which was confiscated when they were detained was never returned to them.
The LADbible Group has contacted ICE for comment.
Joe Harker