Karen Newton was on the trip of a lifetime. Yellowstone. Old Faithful. A bison beside the car. She had a British passport and a valid tourist visa. No criminal record. No overstays. No charges. “I don’t even have parking tickets,” she said. “I am not a dangerous criminal.”
When she and her husband tried to leave the US for Canada, border officials flagged his expired visa and turned them back. Hers was valid. It did not matter. She was handcuffed, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, and locked in a cell.
She slept on the floor under foil blankets. Then she was driven 12 hours overnight to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.
She was detained for 42 days — again, she committed NO CRIME.
But Newton’s reality was six weeks in what she calls a prison. “It’s called a detention facility, but it’s really a prison,” she said. “Locking doors, guards everywhere, cells, everything clamped to the floor.” She slept on the floor for a month because she could not climb to a top bunk. “You only really appreciate your freedom when you’ve had it taken away.”
She believes the pressure to produce detention figures is driving it. “I think it’s Trump insisting they generate figures on how many people they are detaining. I can’t think of any other reason.”
She warned other tourists, “Don’t go – not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control over there. There’s no accountability.”
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