"The new normal": As Trump pursues mass deportations, tourists land in ICE detention

A number of tourists from European countries have been detained by ICE in recent weeks when attempting to enter the United States, their planned vacations instead turning into long stretches in detention. Experts say their arrests are an apparent escalation in enforcement action as President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown rages on. 

In the last month, at least three tourists — two from Germany and one from the United Kingdom — were stopped at a U.S. port of entry and detained for at least two weeks. The latest incident involves 28-year-old Welsh artist Rebecca Burke, who was handcuffed and detained when attempting to re-enter the country in Washington after being turned away by Canadian border officials, according to her father, Paul Burke. In a plea for help on Facebook, he said that his daughter was denied entry into Canada due to "an incorrect visa" and was refused re-entry and classified as an "illegal alien" by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

"Despite being a tourist with no criminal record, she was handcuffed and taken to a detention facility in Tacoma, Washington,” he wrote in the March 8 post. She has remained in detention since, sharing a cell and "surviving on a diet of cold rice, potatoes, and beans" with limited phone call access and "no clear timeline for her release," he added.

As of March 11, Paul Burke shared in a separate post, her family was working on arranging a return flight to Monmouthshire in Wales pending permission from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Burke could not be reached for comment.

The recent spate of tourists detentions is "pretty unusual," according to Stephen Yale-Loehr, an attorney of counsel for Miller Mayer LLP's immigration practice group and former professor at Cornell University. He told Salon that CBP, if it suspects an issue with a tourist's visa, will typically will turn people around if they're entering through a border or send them on the next flight back to their home country. 

"The unusual part of this is that they've been detained so long," Yale-Loehr said in a phone interview, noting that CBP has "been much more vigilant reviewing everyone's credentials and reasons for coming to the United States" since Trump took office. 

"Our immigration detention system is often a black hole where individuals have a hard time contacting lawyers or family friends to be able to help them, and there's no clear procedures other than bringing a federal court action to try to get them released — or until CBP determines that they need to be deported and then sends them out," he added. 

Canadian officials first denied Rebecca Burke entry over concerns that she had violated her visa, Paul Burke told the BBC. As part of what was supposed to be a four-month trip backpacking across North America, Rebecca Burke had traveled to Portland, Oregon, where she stayed with a host family, whom she helped with household chores in exchange for lodging.

She then went to Seattle with plans to travel on to Vancouver, Canada, but officials stopped her at the border. Rebecca Burke told the BBC she spent some six hours at the border waiting as officials debated whether her arrangement counted as work, and they ultimately decided she had "violated" her visa.

The German tourists' experiences mirrored Burke's, with both being held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego for weeks after being arrested at a southern port of entry in February. 

Lucas Sielaff, a 25-year-old German citizen, was arrested at the San Ysidro port of entry on Feb. 18. U.S. officials cancelled his entry permit at the border over suspicions that he intended to remain in the country for longer than allowed. According to his fiancee, Sielaff had incorrectly answered a question about his permanent residence due to a language barrier. He told immigration authorities Las Vegas, where he would be staying with his partner, when she shoud have said Germany, she said, per The Guardian. 

Sielaff was released, escorted to the San Diego airport by ICE and returned to Germany on March 6. 

Jessica Brösche, a 29-year-old German tattoo artist, was taken into custody at the San Ysidro border point in late January after she attempted to travel from Tijuana, Mexico, to Los Angeles with an American friend, the friend, Nikita Lovfing, told CNN. Brösche had been travelling with tattoo equipment. Lovfing speculated that immigration officials misinterpreted Brösche's statements that she was coming to the U.S. to tattoo her — part of a six-year long tattoo project that Lovfing returns with custom clothes in exchange — as an admission that she was entering the country to work. 

Brösche, who told ABC 10News San Diego she spent eight days in solitary confinement, remained in ICE detention for six weeks until Tuesday. Her mother confirmed to German media Tuesday that the artist was headed back home. 

Yale-Loehr said that, generally, individuals travelling to the U.S. as tourists are not allowed to work. In Burke and Brösche's cases, immigration authorities likely considered their accomodation arrangement or reason for entry were a "kind of work" and determined they both violated their visas. 

In Sielaff's case, officials likely assumed he did not have a "bona fide, non-immigrant intent" — a foreign residence he doesn't intend to abandon, per the regulations governing tourist and visa waivers — because of his incorrect answer, Jeff Joseph, the president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyer's Association, told Salon. 

"Had they pursued it a little bit further or asked him additional questions, they may have found out that that was not what he meant," Joseph said. Rather than placing him in detention without bond, immigration officials could also have used "less restrictive measures" like allowing Sielaff to withdraw his application and pay for a flight back to Germany, or leave voluntarily without a deportation order, per Joseph.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment. 

In a statement to ABC 10News San Diego earlier this month, a CBP spokesman said that if a foreign national denied admission to the U.S. is not able to book travel to their home country, "he or she will be turned over to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

"All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, regardless of nationality," an ICE spokeswoman also told the outlet in a statement.

As atypical as they are, these detentions are still legal, Joseph said. Still, they represent "a really strict interpretation" of the policy guidance the State Department and CBP use to make these determinations. 

"It's incredibly heavy handed, and it's not the least restrictive means," he said. Officials are "actually choosing to detain people and put government resources behind deporting them and giving them a deportation order."

Also of note, he said, is that these detained travelers' plights stems from their entering the country with visa waivers rather than tourist visas. Because they're citizens of two of the 43 countries with which the U.S. has agreements based on "good relations and good history of immigration compliance," they're allowed to waive the visa requirement and enter for tourism on short stints without a visit to and express approval from their consulates, Joseph explained. 

Though allowed greater freedom of movement, eligible foreign nationals also "waive" the due process rights and right to contest any removal action against them that come with a formal tourist visa, he added.

By comparison, citizens of nations without those agreements have to apply for a tourist visa at their consulate and undergo an intense vetting process to obtain it before they can travel, he said. Those nationals would "never" face a situation where they are detained at a border or airport if denied. 

These detentions and removals are "definitely an escalation" ushered in by Trump's presidency, he argued. The administration has made clear that they're "looking to deport everyone" regardless of where they're from, and that "chaos is the exercise."

"I think they're detaining these people intentionally because creating this mass hysteria and panic and media attention [for] these cases will prevent people from coming," Joseph said, adding: "We see that in all of their enforcement efforts, and they said it publicly, that he most efficient way to deport people is to have them do it themselves."

He warned that American citizens traveling to other countries, especially those in Europe with reciprocity treaties governing their visas, should expect to face increased scrutiny and similar treatment as the Trump administration has deployed here. 

"This, 100%, is the new normal," Joseph said.