A British backpacker detained in the US for nearly three weeks has admitted she was "naive" to believe she would be unaffected by Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Rebecca Burke, a 28-year-old graphic artist from Monmouthshire, South Wales, was refused entry to Canada from Washington state, where she planned to stay with a host family, exchanging domestic work for accommodation.
She was informed she should have applied for a working visa, not a tourist visa.
Ms Burke told The Guardian she had been unconcerned about leaving the US before her 19-day detention.
“I was worried on their (people being detained at the border) behalf – an abstract worry and concern for others – rather than for myself,” she told The Guardian.
“Because, I thought, I’m getting out of here.”
She added: “I was naive to think that what was going on in the world, or at the border, wouldn’t affect me.”
Ms Burke had previously been staying with a host family in Portland, Oregon, under a similar arrangement after spending some time sightseeing in New York City, where she first arrived from the UK at the start of the year.
Canadian authorities told her to go back to the US and fill in new paperwork before returning to cross into Canada.
However, when she tried to re-enter the US, she was handcuffed and put in a cell before being taken to Tacoma Northwest detention facility in Washington state.
She said: “I heard the door lock, and I instantly threw up.”
Ms Burke said after she arrived at the facility, she was taken to a dorm which she shared with dozens of other women.
“Most of them were asylum seekers,” she told The Guardian.
“But there was this handful of new people who had come in recently who did not know why they were here.”
Her father Paul Burke first contacted the Foreign Office in the UK and then decided to go the British press.
Just over a week after widespread media coverage of Ms Burke’s story, she was released.
“I was aware that it was from a major position of privilege that the press listened to this story,” Ms Burke said.
“I was a British tourist, I had these images of my trip on Instagram, and I had contacts with journalists, so I was very lucky. And I wanted the same thing that Ice wanted, which was for me to go home.”
Ms Burke said: “Maybe border security have been pressured to prove they’re stepping up. It did feel like they wanted to get me from the moment I was walked to the American side.”
She has joined her father in warning tourists over plans to visit the US.
Mr Burke previously said: “Even with someone so careful, she was in detention for 19 days.
“If you are going to the US for anything other than a standard holiday, I would write to the US embassy, tell them what visas you think you need and get them to write back to confirm yes or no, and then carry that letter with you.”
Ms Burke warned people not to go at all.
“First, because of the danger of what could happen to you,” she said. “And, secondly, do you really want to give your money to this country right now?”
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