A TikToker has claimed she and a friend were detained at an airport by US Customs because of their good looks, saying they were held for about five hours before being finally being released.
Australian influencer Mikaela Testa, who has 2.2 million followers on TikTok (@mikaelatesta), recently shared a video explaining what happened to her at LAX Airport, alleging officials had suspected them of being strippers or escorts.
Joined by her friend Trinity, she explained: “Okay, so we got to the LAX airport. I made sure I looked really, really ratchet and bad because I know that the US Customs are really strict.
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“Trinity, with her beautiful eyelash extensions and big, fat juicy lips, pulls up looking hot to the US Customs and I knew. I knew but I didn’t say anything.
“The US Customs guy goes, ‘is this your first time in LA?’
“She’s like, ‘yeah'. ‘Do you have a return flight?’ ‘No'.”
Mikaela said the customs official ‘sent her straight to the detained area’, adding: “I know for a fact that he thought she was a prostitute or an escort looking to work in the US because they love detaining Australian girls and accusing them of that until they tell the truth.”
She said she had ‘so many Australian girlfriends’ who had ‘spent days in that detained room, being told that they are escorts and to just 'tell the truth', having known many people who had been sent home.
“Luckily we didn’t get sent home,” Mikaela continued.
“We thought we were going to get sent home. And there were heaps of Australian girls in there at the same time, so maybe it was the fact that we were Australian. I don’t know.
“This guy was staring at us, like death staring us the whole time and if we look, he’d be like, ‘Look away, look at the TV, don’t look at me, only look at me if you're being spoken to'.
“They go through your entire camera roll, all of your messages, and they make a decision whether they’re going to send your a**e home or not.”
Mikaela said officials also detained two other women that knew her from Australia, who she claims ‘were strippers’.
"They were going through their phones and there were just a bunch of explicit photos,” she said.
“And they were just cracking up. So unprofessional. They were literally all laughing, looking at these girls' phones.
“I was terrified if they'd have touched my phone. Luckily they did not.
“And you’re not allowed to touch your phone at all. If you get caught touching your phone, you’re basically dead. Good luck, they’ll send you to jail.”
Mikaela said they were in the room for around five hours, where they ‘met so many strippers’ and ‘so many girls’ who asked her and Trinity what they were in there for, to which she responded: “I don’t know.”
She concluded: “They finally let us out at the end. We were literally the last people out of the detained room because the guys just wanted to keep us around for longer.
“I think they wanted to keep us around for longer.”
The video has racked up 111,000 likes and more than 800,000 views, along with hundreds of comments from stunned TikTokers.
One person even claimed to have experienced something similar, writing: “LAX customs are the worst every time they tell me I’m too young and too pretty to be travelling alone and ask how I paid for these flights by myself.”
A spokesperson for US Customers and Border Protection told LADbible in a statement: "Due to privacy law restrictions we can’t comment on individual cases.
"It is absolutely false and misleading that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will determine a traveler admissibility based on their looks or physical appearance. Travelers must demonstrate they are bona-fine visitors into the Unites States.
"CBP officers determine a traveler admissibility based of all factors presented during the inspection process."
Jess Hardiman