If you do, be prepared to be treated like a criminal
The Guardian with a harrowing tale of a British retiree held in detention by ICE for 45 days:
When Karen Newton left home in late July 2025, she knew that international travellers were being locked up in immigration detention centres in the US. “I was aware,” she nods. “But I never thought it would have any impact on my holiday.” Karen, 65, had a British passport and a tourist visa. She hadn’t been abroad for eight years, and was keen for some guaranteed sun. “I really just wanted to get away from the house.”
She and her husband, Bill, 66, had an ambitious itinerary that would take them through California, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and then on to Canada over two months. Las Vegas wasn’t to Karen’s taste: “Way too commercialised.” She much preferred Yellowstone, where they saw Old Faithful, the famous geyser, as it shot boiling water into the air, and got up close with some extraordinary wildlife. “There was a bison right next to the car. Another time, a wolf walked past.” Her eyes sparkle at the memory. “It was just amazing.”
The dream holiday ended abruptly on Friday 26 September, as Karen and Bill were trying to leave the US. When they crossed the border, Canadian officials told them they didn’t have the correct paperwork to bring the car with them. They were turned back to Montana on the American side – and to US border control officials. Bill’s US visa had expired; Karen’s had not.
“I worried then,” she says. “I was worried for him. I thought, well, at least I am here to support him.”
She didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an ordeal that would see Karen handcuffed, shackled and sleeping on the floor of a locked cell, before being driven for 12 hours through the night to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Karen was incarcerated for a total of six weeks – even though she had been travelling with a valid visa.
Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. “I don’t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,” she says. “I am not a dangerous criminal. I didn’t enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there.”
So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says.
This is not the first time I’ve heard this. Many of the tourists who’ve been held have said the same and they’ve been told that it’s because there is money being made by detaining them. We know for a fact that Stephen Miller has instituted quotas and there’s no doubt that the private prisons are being paid by the numbers. So of course they’re just shuffling bodies for profit.
This woman’s story is terrifying. She was held literally for no reason and kept there for 42 days. She didn’t know what to do — she isn’t a criminal or an American familiar with the legal system. The other people mentioned in the article have similar stories. One of them says:
“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.”
But this year is set to be a big one for international travel to the US. As one of the hosts of the 2026 Fifa World Cup, the country is expecting to see tourists from across the globe. “I worry about young people going out there for the World Cup – I really do. I imagine a group of young guys getting drunk at a game, getting arrested. I could see them easily ending up in the same place as I did. They’d find some reason to detain them. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.”
I know most of us are just going about our lives, doing what we normally do, watching this from afar. But that doesn’t change the fact that we are living in a police state. I wish I felt confident that there will be some accountability for this atrocity down the road but it all depends on how far gone we really are and I just don’t know. Sometimes you can’t tell while you’re living through it.