Don’t visit the US – it just isn’t worth the risks right now | Arwa Mahdawi
Minor visa infractions have seen tourists detained, shackled and deported by overzealous US border staff. There are many more welcoming places to go on holiday
Do you like being shackled and strip-searched? Absolutely no judgment if so, but anyone who isn’t into that sort of thing may want to avoid a holiday to the US at the moment. Although I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that. Unless you’ve been hiding under a news-blocking rock (in which case: what’s the address? And can I join you?), you’ll have noticed that Donald Trump’s America hasn’t exactly been rolling out the red carpet for visitors. There have been a number of recent incidents where white westerners – people who aren’t normally targeted by overzealous US immigration authorities – have been detained, deported or denied entry for obscure reasons.
Take the 28-year-old Welsh artist Rebecca Burke, for example. She was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) for 19 days in what her father described as “horrendous conditions”. Now, to be fair, Burke had the wrong paperwork: she hadn’t realised that she needed a working visa instead of a tourist visa in order to exchange domestic chores for accommodation with a host family. But getting imprisoned for almost three weeks over a mix-up and then being led on to a deportation flight – in chains! – back to a country that is supposedly a close ally, is obviously extreme. A Canadian woman also made headlines after being detained by Ice for two weeks when immigration enforcement officers flagged her visa application paperwork. And two German tourists were similarly held for almost two weeks in a detention centre.
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