Edith HejbergThe trip unraveled on 26 September as they tried to cross into Canada. Officials told them they lacked the correct paperwork to bring their car across the border.
When Karen Newton left the UK in July 2025, she knew stories were circulating about travellers being detained in the US. “I was aware,” she says. “But I never thought it would have any impact on my holiday.”
At 65, travelling on a British passport with a valid tourist visa, she and her husband Bill were finally taking a long-awaited break. After eight years without going abroad, she simply wanted sunshine and a change of scene. “I really just wanted to get away from the house.”
Two months on the open road
The couple mapped out an ambitious journey through California, Nevada, Wyoming and Montana, before heading on to Canada.
Las Vegas left her cold, “Way too commercialised.” Yellowstone, by contrast, felt magical. She watched Old Faithful erupt and spotted wildlife up close. “There was a bison right next to the car. Another time, a wolf walked past … It was just amazing.”
Stopped at the border
The trip unraveled on 26 September as they tried to cross into Canada. Officials told them they lacked the correct paperwork to bring their car across the border.
They were sent back to Montana, and straight into the hands of US border control. Bill’s 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.”
From confusion to chains
Karen assumed she would be allowed to return home. Instead, the couple were held in an office from mid-morning until nightfall.
As darkness fell, officers arrived with restraints. “It was scary. You have no way of knowing what’s going to happen. It got darker and darker. And then other agents turned up with all these chains and handcuffs.”
Shackled at wrists, waist and ankles, they were driven through the night to a border patrol station.
Sleeping on the floor
At Sweetgrass station in Montana, they spent three days in a cell without beds, sleeping on mats under foil blankets.
“I was very nervous and frightened the whole time. And I was chilled to the bone, I couldn’t warm up.”
Interviewed separately and without legal counsel, Karen says she was told she was “guilty by association” because she had helped her husband pack, allegedly breaching her tourist visa. “It just went from crazy to ridiculous.”
The offer of ‘self-removal’
Officials suggested a way out: sign up for voluntary self-deportation under Project Homecoming. Participants would waive their right to see a judge and face a potential 10-year US ban.
“He said, ‘If you volunteer for self-removal, and because of the special relationship the US has with the UK, it will be over very quickly.’”
“I said to him, ‘I’m on holiday. I want to go home.’” She signed. She had no idea she would remain detained for another six weeks.
Inside an ice detention centre
The couple were transferred again, this time to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington.
“It’s called a detention facility, but it’s really a prison,” Karen says. “Locking doors, guards everywhere, cells, everything clamped to the floor.”
Issued grey sweats and an ID band, she was placed in the women’s unit. Refusing a top bunk, she slept on a thin mattress on the floor for a month.
Losing track of time
The unit had no windows and lights stayed on around the clock. From her cell, Karen could not see the only clock in the hall.
One day she made tea, thinking it was mid-morning. Another detainee gently corrected her, it was 11.30 at night. “I thought I’d had a night’s sleep, and I hadn’t.”
She filled her days with jigsaw puzzles and books, listening to other women describe separations from children and years-long legal limbo. “People think it is just criminals that are being deported, but they’re just a lot of people who went there for a better life. Is that really criminal?”
Rumours of incentives
During her time inside, Karen says guards repeatedly told her that ICE officers receive bonuses for each person detained. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain, the guards told me that.”
“I was told this by multiple sources … There is all the incentive in the world to find a reason, any reason, not to let someone go.”
An ICE spokesperson denied this, stating: “Bonuses for ICE officers are not based on arrest or detention numbers.”
A family left in limbo
Karen managed to message her son early on: “We have been unavoidably detained.” Her phone was later confiscated.
When she finally called weeks later, she felt ashamed. “It was humiliating.”
Her son contacted the Foreign Office, but she says consular support was minimal. Inside the facility, updates from officials were vague. “Their stock answer was ‘two weeks’ or ‘soon’.”
Sudden release
On 6 November, without warning, a guard opened her cell during headcount. She was being released.
Bill would be freed too, though they spent hours apart before being driven, still shackled, to Seattle-Tacoma airport.
Back home in Hertfordshire, she found dead houseplants, unpaid bills and lost luggage. “It was just lovely to be in my own bed … You only really appreciate your freedom when you’ve had it taken away.”
A warning to other travellers
Karen’s case unfolded as the US recorded 4.5 million fewer international visitors in 2025. Visits from the UK dropped 15%, and industry leaders estimate billions in lost revenue.
She believes detention policies are driven by pressure to increase arrest numbers. “If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.”
Her message to would-be visitors is blunt: “Don’t go, not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control over there.”
With the US set to host the 2026 Fifa World Cup, she fears others may face similar ordeals. “If we don’t speak up, nobody is going to know, and it will happen to somebody else.”
