A German woman has experienced what so many poor immigrants experience at the hands of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
A German tourist is fighting to be released from an immigration detention center after she was denied entry at the San Diego border and taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) last month.
Jessica Brösche, a 26-year-old German tattoo artist, is being indefinitely detained by US Customs and Border Protection after she tried to enter San Diego on 25 January from Tijuana, Mexico, with her American best friend, Amelia Lofving. The two were traveling with tattoo equipment.
…Brösche had her German passport, confirmation of her visa waiver to enter the country, and a copy of her return ticket back to Berlin, Lofving said. But she was still pulled aside for a secondary inspection by a US Customs and Border Protection agent.
Brösche said she then spent days detained in a cell at the San Diego border before being taken into custody by Ice. The agency brought her to the Otay Mesa detention center, where she’s now been for more than a month.
According to KPBS, US Customs and Border Protection accused Brösche of planning to violate the terms of the visa waiver program by intending to work as a tattoo artist during her time in Los Angeles.
According to ABC’s 10News, she was forced to spend eight days in solitary confinement in the facility.
“She says it was like a horror movie. They were screaming in all different rooms. After nine days, she said she went so insane that she started punching the walls and then she’s got blood on her knuckles,” Lofving said of her friend’s experience.
Surely suspicion that she might commit such a minor infraction does not deserve high-handed treatment like this? The republic will not collapse if someone works illegally for a short time as a tattoo artist.
But this is Trump’s America, where border officials have been empowered to treat everyone as potential terrorists. She should consider herself lucky that she has not been sent to Guantanamo and disappeared forever. At least, not yet.
Probably best for would-be travelers to avoid this regressive, criminal-operated country whenever possible for the foreseeable future.
Any reason she couldn’t simply have been put on the next plane home?
Of course -- nobody would make any money from that, would they?
USA, keep it up, please. Make it as clear as possible to inhabitants of the civilised world that we’re not welcome -- more so than usual I mean. We’ll get the message eventually.
The last time I travelled to the US was pre-9/11, and even then the experience at immigration was so unpleasant that I swore I’d never be back.
The last time I traveled to the USA it was pre-9/11 and I returned just shortly after 9/11. I was there on a legal working visa (H-2B). Getting the visa was an unpleasant experience, getting through the border control too. Getting out was not pleasant too, even though I was one of the lucky ones who was able to use their return ticket, without having to request help from the CZ embassy like some of my friends who had Swiss Air tickets.
After I returned, I was asked several times by different people (some of whom were German) why I did not try to overstay my visa and stay in the US or why I did not try to apply again like many others did. One of my friends even got an H-1B visa and is now a naturalized US citizen.
My reply was along these lines:
I am sorry to say, that from what I see from over here, the USA only got worse in all aspects since then. Except maybe the food, that I cannot evaluate over the internet.
From what I know, the lady wanted to do a tattoo on her friend. If they’re going to arrest anybody who enters the country with working equipment, lots of people will be arrested for the crime of having a functional brain, which seems to be on par with the rest of the US administration.
And yet, a certain dude from South Africa came here on a student visa but instead started working for a company. Perhaps someone should look into that.
I teach (science!) at a boarding school with around 95% international students. Our numbers dropped by ~60% during covid and have been flat for a year or two. I wonder if fewer families will send their kids to us in the current climate….
Katydid beat me to it…but it may be worth repeating…
But we are collapsing with large thanks to a particular someone from South Africa who illegally worked for a short time as a web platform developer! (Or whatever you would call the work this particular person did.)
The performative cruelty of I.C.E. and US border controls have been bad for more than a generation, but got much worse after 9/11.
Justice comes from having money for good lawyers, just like in the criminal justice system, only worse. As a non-citizen you are pretty much guilty by suspicion.
After WWII it was the assumption that everyone wanted to go to the US to stay, an idea that lives on in the heads of MAGA voters.
When the economy gradually got worse from Vietnam onwards the immigrants -- especially the brown ones- became an even easier scapegoat than Black americans.
The absence of basic justice for travellers and immigrants is an extension of the repressive nature of the wider society but with even fewer safeguards.
Sounds like the Soviet Union in the 1970’s. Must be a coincidence.
Why is our new efficient government wasting money housing this person? I don’t think Germany would refuse her return, so why wasn’t she immediately deported? Sounds to me like DOGE needs to fire a bunch of ICE personnel.