When Karen Newton left home in late July 2025, she knew that international travellers were being locked up in immigration detention centres in the US. \u201cI was aware,\u201d she nods. \u201cBut I never thought it would have any impact on my holiday.\u201d Karen, 65, had a British passport and a tourist visa. She hadn\u2019t been abroad for eight years, and was keen for some guaranteed sun. \u201cI\u00a0really just wanted to get away from the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
She and her husband, Bill, 66, had an ambitious itinerary that would take them through California, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and then on to Canada over two months. Las Vegas wasn\u2019t to Karen\u2019s taste: \u201cWay too commercialised.\u201d She much preferred Yellowstone, where they saw Old Faithful, the famous geyser, as it shot boiling water into the air, and got up close with some extraordinary wildlife. \u201cThere was a bison right next to the car. Another time, a wolf walked past.\u201d Her eyes sparkle at the memory. \u201cIt was just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dream holiday ended abruptly on Friday 26 September, as Karen and Bill were trying to leave the US. When they crossed the border, Canadian officials told them they didn\u2019t have the correct paperwork to bring the car with them. They were turned back to Montana on the American side \u2013 and to US border control officials. Bill\u2019s US visa had expired; Karen\u2019s had not.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worried then,\u201d she says. \u201cI was worried for him. I\u00a0thought, well, at least I am here to support him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an ordeal that would see Karen handcuffed, shackled and sleeping on the floor of a locked cell, before being driven for 12 hours through the night to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Karen was incarcerated for a total of six weeks \u2013 even though she had been travelling with a valid visa.<\/p>\n
Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. \u201cI don\u2019t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,\u201d she says. \u201cI am not a dangerous criminal. I didn\u2019t enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. \u201cIndividual ICE agents get money per head that they detain \u2013 the guards told me that,\u201d Karen says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no secret that the Trump administration<\/a> has been pouring money into ICE. Its annual budget \u2013 $6bn a decade ago \u2013 is now $85bn; ICE is now the highest -funded law enforcement agency in the US. Since last August, new recruits can expect to receive a signing-on bonus of up to $50,000. Karen\u2019s experience has left her convinced that ICE agents are being given even more incentives \u2013 to arrest and detain anyone they possibly can, even blameless tourists who have all the paperwork they need to be in the US.<\/p>\n Within days of Donald Trump\u2019s second inauguration on 20 January 2025, his administration ordered ICE officials to detain more people, with new quotas that would increase the total number of arrests from a few hundred to 1,200-1,500 a day. Reports immediately began to emerge of international travellers being detained by ICE officers.<\/p>\n Illustration: Edel Rodriguez\/The Guardian<\/p>\n On 25 January, German tourist Jessica Br\u00f6sche<\/a> was stopped by ICE and held for 45 days (including eight days of solitary confinement). Early in February, Germans Lucas Sielaff and Fabian Schmidt<\/a> were also detained. In late February, the British backpacker Rebecca Burke<\/a> was incarcerated for 19 days in the same ICE facility where Karen would later spend six weeks. (Like Karen, Burke had been trying to leave the US when she was detained.) Canadian actor Jasmine Mooney<\/a> was held in an ICE detention centre for two weeks in March. In July, New Zealander Sarah Shaw and her six-year-old son<\/a> were detained for three weeks.<\/p>\n These stories may be the tip of the iceberg: we only know about them because they involve people who were prepared to talk publicly about being seized by ICE. They are generally young people who were held on suspicion of being in the US to work without the correct visa. That\u2019s why, when Karen heard some of their stories before she left the UK, she assumed their experiences had no relevance to her: she was a retired person taking a holiday. In the end, Karen was detained for longer than almost every one of them.<\/p>\n I meet Karen in her home, on a quiet road in Hertfordshire. She sits in the corner of her sofa, next to a magnifying light and a trolley that holds a sewing box, thread and everything else she needs for her cross stitch. The walls of her home are adorned with frames containing her embroidery. The first thing you see when you come through the front door is a framed 9,000-piece puzzle of the Tower of Babel that took her two years to finish. \u201cI don\u2019t like staying away from home for a long time,\u201d she tells me, over tea and Jammie Dodgers biscuits.<\/p>\n double quotation markIt was scary. You have no way of knowing what\u2019s going to happen. It got darker and darker <\/p>\n When they were turned back from Canada, and US border control agents saw that Bill\u2019s visa had expired, Karen fully expected to be allowed to return home. The Newtons immediately offered to pay for their flights \u2013 they had funds available to cover the tickets \u2013 but the officials \u201cweren\u2019t interested\u201d, she says. Instead, they were taken into an office and made to wait there, from 10.30am until nightfall.<\/p>\n At first, Karen was bewildered. \u201cThere was no reason to hold me,\u201d she says. \u201cBill\u2019s an adult. Why am I held responsible for him?\u201d When she asked why she was being detained, an officer told her his supervisor had instructed him to hold her. The hours ticked by. \u201cIt was scary. You have no way of knowing what\u2019s going to happen. It got darker and darker. And then other agents turned up with all these chains and handcuffs.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen and Bill were shackled at the wrists , waist and ankles and bundled into a vehicle. Karen doesn\u2019t know how long they were on the road for. \u201cIt just seemed to be a never-ending day.\u201d They arrived at Sweetgrass border patrol station in Montana in the middle of the night, and were held there for three days, sharing a cell without beds; they slept on mats on the floor, under foil blankets. \u201cI was very nervous and frightened the whole time. And I was chilled to the bone \u2013 I couldn\u2019t warm up.\u201d<\/p>\n They were interviewed separately. Karen was not offered a lawyer; she wasn\u2019t entitled to one, she says, because she had been detained, rather than arrested. She didn\u2019t think she needed one, anyway. \u201cI just thought, \u2018When they listen to me, when they come to their senses, they are going to let me go.\u2019 I thought they might escort me to the airport and put us on a plane \u2013 hopefully both of us. But that didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill had been working in the US with a valid work permit, but did not have a green card \u2013 fed up with the appeals process, he had decided to leave and retire back in the UK. Karen was told that she was \u201cguilty by association\u201d, and that she had broken the terms of her valid B2 tourist visa by helping her husband pack for the trip. \u201cIt just went from crazy to ridiculous. It felt like they just wanted an excuse to detain me.\u201d<\/p>\n There was a way to make things easier, the agent said: Bill and Karen could volunteer for self-removal. Last May, the White House announced Project Homecoming, a scheme whereby so-called \u201cillegal aliens\u201d could opt for self-deportation. Anyone who agrees to it gets their flight home paid by the US government, as well as an \u201cexit bonus\u201d payment of $1,000. (The Department of Homeland Security announced on 21 January 2026 that the bonus had increased to $2,600 to \u201ccelebrate one year of Trump\u201d.) Project Homecoming was funded by repurposing $250m previously intended to be spent on refugee aid.<\/p>\n double quotation markIt\u2019s called a detention facility, but it\u2019s really a prison. Locking doors, guards everywhere, cells, everything clamped to the floor<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018If you volunteer for self-removal \u2013 and because of the special relationship the US has with the UK \u2013 it will be over very quickly,\u2019\u201d Karen continues. They\u2019d have to sign a document that would mean they would be banned from the US for up to 10 years, and waive their right to go before a judge. If they chose not to, and waited for their day in court, they would be prolonging the ordeal, she was told.<\/p>\n \u201cI said to him, \u2018I\u2019m on holiday. I want to go home.\u2019 I\u00a0would have taken the shortest route, whatever it was, which he said was volunteering for self-removal.\u201d So they signed. Karen had no way of knowing that she was only on day three of what would turn out to be 42 days of detention.<\/p>\n The Newtons were transferred in shackles once again. A border control SUV drove them from Sweetgrass to Spokane, in Washington state, where they waited for an hour before being put on what Karen calls a \u201cprison van\u201d, and taken to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s called a detention facility, but it\u2019s really a prison,\u201d she says. \u201cLocking doors, guards everywhere, cells, everything clamped to the floor \u2013 it\u2019s how I imagine a prison to be. Prison would actually be better, because if you\u2019re in prison, you get a sentence \u2013 they tell you how long you are going to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen was given a grey sweatshirt and jogging bottoms to wear and issued with an ID card and wristband. She didn\u2019t allow herself to be afraid. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to give it headspace. I was just in disbelief, incredulous that this could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n The Northwest ICE Processing Center, Tacoma, Washington. Photograph: Jason Redmond\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In the early hours of the morning, she was separated from Bill, and taken to the women\u2019s unit: a vast room filled with bunk beds and metal picnic tables. The guard on duty asked if she was able to climb a ladder to get on a top bunk; Karen said she wasn\u2019t. \u201cI can\u2019t do heights. And I am in my 60s \u2013 it\u2019s not something I wanted to do.\u201d The guard told Karen sharply that she was fed up with \u201cthis crap\u201d. She led Karen to a cell on the mezzanine level, where an inmate was occupying the lower bunk. \u201cThe guard said, \u2018Your choice is either the top bunk or the floor.\u2019 So I set myself up on the floor. That\u2019s where I stayed for the next month.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen had pain in her hips and back from sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor, and constipation because she was afraid of going to the toilet in a place where anyone could watch her. Her cellmate, Maria, spoke no\u00a0English, but they got along; Maria was an older woman, and Karen felt safe with her. After a month, Maria asked to be transferred to a cell on the ground floor because her knees couldn\u2019t handle the stairs up to the mezzanine level, so Karen eventually took over the bottom bunk.<\/p>\n Time passed slowly at Tacoma, but Karen says she lost all sense of it. From her cell, she was unable to see the one small clock affixed above the guard\u2019s desk in the main hall. The unit had no windows, and the lights were always on, so it was difficult to tell night from day. Once, Karen woke up and went to make herself a cup of tea. She sat at one of the metal tables to drink it, and\u00a0one of the other inmates asked her if she was having trouble sleeping. \u201cI said, \u2018I slept all right.\u2019 And she\u00a0smiled\u00a0and said, \u2018What time of day do you think it is?\u2019\u201d The clock on the wall said 11.30; Karen had assumed it was 11.30 in the morning. \u201cI thought I\u2019d had a night\u2019s sleep, and I hadn\u2019t. I must\u2019ve been in bed for three\u00a0hours.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen tried to keep herself busy with the jigsaw puzzles and books that were left out for inmates. She kept to herself much of the time; most of the other women didn\u2019t speak English anyway. But those who did shared traumatic stories of being separated from their young children, and agonising details of delays in their legal fight to stay in the country. Some had been living in the US for decades, building lives and families. A few of them had been detained for more than a year. \u201cPeople think it is just criminals that are being deported, but they\u2019re just a lot of people who went there for a better life. Is that really criminal?\u201d<\/p>\n While the Northwest Detention Center is an ICE facility, it is run by GEO, a private company. Aside from her experience with the first guard who took her to her cell, Karen says the staff were \u201cnice enough\u201d to her. None of them could understand why she was there. \u201cOne of them said to me, \u2018You need to find a pro bono lawyer and sue.\u2019\u201d Another guard turned out to be British. \u201cI had several conversations with her. She said, \u2018I can understand them holding your husband, but I\u00a0don\u2019t understand why they would hold you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It was during these conversations that Karen was told repeatedly that ICE agents are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. \u201cI was told this by multiple sources,\u201d she says. \u201cThere is all the incentive in the world to find a reason \u2013 any reason \u2013 not to let someone go.\u201d<\/p>\n When I contacted ICE to ask if they could confirm or deny whether individual officers are paid a bonus for every person they detain, a spokesperson said, \u201cBonuses for ICE officers are not based on arrest or detention numbers. Pay and bonuses for ICE officers are administered in accordance with office of personnel management policy. ICE officers risk their own safety day in and day out because they took an oath to enforce the nation\u2019s immigration laws, not to make large sums of\u00a0money.\u201d<\/p>\n After a couple of weeks, one of the guards asked Karen when she was going to see her husband. Until then, she\u2019d had no idea that she was entitled to. The guard told her she needed to apply for permission. At first her application was turned down, but she eventually did get to see Bill. \u201cIt was bittersweet. It was nice to see he was OK, but in a way, I wished \u2026\u201d Her voice trails off. \u201cIt brought it home more. It was a slap in the face. You\u2019re in a prison, and now you\u2019re going to have to go back to your unit.\u201d<\/p>\n Detainees exercise in an outdoor recreation area at the Northwest ICE Processing Center. Photograph: David Ryder\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Karen had messaged their son, Scott, when they were initially held at the border. \u201cWe have been unavoidably detained,\u201d she\u2019d texted, \u201cI will let you know when I am home.\u201d But her phone was soon taken away from her. It was several weeks before she rang him from the detention centre. Why did it take her so long? \u201cIt was humiliating.\u201d Her eyes fall. \u201cI was ashamed to be locked up.\u201d<\/p>\n When she finally called Scott, he was angry with her for not having rung sooner: he had been worrying ever since the first day. He had already contacted the UK Foreign Office, who eventually told him there was no way his parents could be released while the federal government shutdown was ongoing; it ran from 1 October to 12 November. Karen knew this couldn\u2019t be true: she saw people leaving the detention centre every day. (In fact, ICE deported 56,000 people during the 43 days of shutdown, when most government business was halted.)<\/p>\n Both Karen and Bill separately tried to contact the British consulate. After weeks of effort, Karen managed to speak to someone, but the consular official told her they couldn\u2019t interfere. \u201cShe said she\u2019d look into it, but we never heard from her again. They were absolutely terrible.\u201d Every week, ICE agents would visit the unit to update inmates about any developments on their cases, and tell them when they were going to leave the detention centre. \u201cTheir stock answer was \u2018two weeks\u2019 or \u2018soon\u2019.\u201d One week, ICE didn\u2019t turn up at all.<\/p>\n Karen began to feel hopeless. \u201cI was talking to others and thinking, \u2018Maybe I should have gone the route of asking to see a judge?\u2019 I was thinking, \u2018Did I do the wrong\u00a0thing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And then, out of the blue on Thursday 6 November, when the guards were doing a headcount and the inmates were supposed to be locked in their cells, Karen\u2019s door suddenly opened. \u201cI thought it was some sort of glitch.\u201d She peeked out of her cell and saw a guard, who informed her that she was being released, and handed her a bag for\u00a0her to return her used bedding. She was taken away\u00a0from the unit to the \u201cintake\u201d area of the detention centre, and given her own clothes to change into. It\u00a0was\u00a0here that she was told Bill was being released, too. \u201cSuch a huge relief.\u201d But Karen would spend several more\u00a0hours locked in a cell without him before they were finally reunited, handcuffed and shackled once more, shuffled outside, and driven to Seattle-Tacoma international airport.<\/p>\n double quotation markYou only really appreciate your freedom when you\u2019ve had it taken away<\/p>\n Karen arrived home in Hertfordshire to find her car battery flat and her houseplants dead. After failing to pay two months\u2019 worth of bills, her credit score has been affected. There were mounds of post, and six weeks\u2019 worth of emails that she says she is still trying to catch up on. Their luggage, which was confiscated when they were detained, has never been returned. \u201cEvery so often I think of something else that was in my suitcase that I\u2019m never going to see again.\u201d She\u2019s made a claim on her travel insurance to see if they are prepared to cover the cost of the possessions seized at the border.<\/p>\n But Karen has become grateful for little things. \u201cIt was just lovely to be in my own bed,\u201d she sighs. \u201cOne day Bill commented on the poor weather, and I said, \u2018Yes, but you know what? We can go out in it if we want to. We\u2019re free.\u2019 You only really appreciate your freedom when you\u2019ve had it taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump entered his second term in office promising a crackdown on unauthorised migrants. Ever since, tourists have suffered \u2013 and so has America\u2019s tourism industry. The US saw 4.5m fewer visits from international travellers in 2025; visits from Canada were down by more than 22%, from Germany by more than 11% and from the UK by 15%. The World Travel & Tourism Council, the global body representing the industry, estimated that the decline in international tourism last year cost the US $12.5bn in lost revenue<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is expensive to detain people, keep them locked up for weeks on end, encourage them to declare themselves illegal aliens in exchange for a cash bonus and cover the costs of their transportation home. (Karen received the $1,000 bonus but, like others who have opted for self-deportation, Bill never received the promised payment.) Karen is still bewildered that they were prepared to spend so much money incarcerating her.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s Trump insisting they generate figures on how many people they are detaining. I can\u2019t think of any other reason. ICE just do it because they can, and because they are told to round up people and deport them. It seems to have gone down the slippery slope of just kicking everyone out who isn\u2019t American \u2013 and now even Americans are getting in trouble. It\u2019s really scary.\u201d<\/p>\n British backpacker Rebecca Burke. Photograph: Francesca Jones\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Rebecca Burke, the British graphic artist detained by ICE when she was backpacking through North America, was released after 19 days once her story became international news. Karen may have been released sooner had she shared her story earlier. But\u00a0when she was in the detention centre, she had balked at the idea. \u201cI was mortified at the thought,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was only afterwards I thought, \u2018No, I do need to speak up. How many other people like me have been detained and not said a word? If we don\u2019t speak up, nobody is going to know, and it will happen to somebody\u00a0else.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She has a message for other tourists considering a trip to America: \u201cDon\u2019t go \u2013 not with Trump in charge. It\u2019s totally out of control over there. There\u2019s no accountability. They don\u2019t seem to need a reason for detaining you.\u201d<\/p>\n But this year is set to be a big one for international travel to the US. As one of the hosts of the 2026 Fifa\u00a0World\u00a0Cup, the country is expecting to see tourists from across the globe. \u201cI worry about young people going\u00a0out there for the World Cup<\/a> \u2013 I really do. I imagine a group of young guys getting drunk at a game, getting\u00a0arrested. I could see them easily ending up in the same place as I did. They\u2019d find some reason to\u00a0detain them. If it can happen to me, it can happen to\u00a0anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Karen Newton left home in late July 2025, she knew that international travellers were being locked up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-437605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}