What happened in America...

I am currently sitting on bed in a Premier Inn, my hair is wet and my boyfriend Osh is asleep next to me. I am safe. I am not happy but I am safe. I appreciate it so much, considering what has happened the last 24 hours.

When I posted about how excited I was for this Alaska trip on Facebook using Trusted Housesitters, Bondi was in the back of my mind. I can't fathom how much hatred is in this world and I hide from it generally. So when I posted I was excited, I felt a bit guilty, but I do know that my friends and family were excited for me and would want me to share.

I posted that we were off to Alaska, then when we reach Reykjavik I posted where we were, then 8 hours after that I posted I am in USA!!! 

When we go into Seattle airport, I was so happy because I cheesily and openly love "Sleepless in Seattle", coincidentally a film Rob Reiner appeared in, another grotesque and senseless thing which has happened in the last few days. That overshadowed it but I love that film, I love rain, and I love water, so Seattle is extremely appealing to me.

We approached customs, we got through the queue quickly which was great as we had only about 30 minutes to get our connecting flight to Fairbanks, Alaska, 

The customs officer asked us what were were doing and we said holidays, and that I was going to pet sit (unpaid). He then asked us how long we were staying etc. and we went through all the usual security questions, with maybe a bit more detail than I am used to.

He picked up a plastic bag and placed our mobile phones and our passports into it, sealed it, and called a colleague over to escort us through the gate. I naively thought she was taking us to meet our connection as we had very little time, at this point having still a great deal of belief in the humanity of people.

6.33pm SEA : We were walked through into a secure waiting room, our luggage was left outside. The room was long with a large looming desk at the near end, higher up than you could stand with glass barriers between us and the four US customs police officers sitting behind it. We were told to sit down.

I was still extremely giddy and happy, this hadn't phased me, but Osh was already on the alert. I was called up to the high desk and I looked up at a middle aged female police officer who asked me to show her on my phone what App I used to secure my house sitting gig. She had latex gloves on as she pulled my phone out of the bag (still I wasn't feeling worried). I brought the app up and she had a scan through it. She then asked me who my contact was in the USA. I told her a lady called Tammy who lives in North Pole, Alaska and she is going on holiday to visit her family in Hawaii whilst we stay at her house with her dogs and her chickens. I then showed her my WhatsApp history with Tammy, a sequence of ever increasing excited messages back and forth about my big adventure.

I was told to sit back down.

At 6.35pm I went up and asked about our connecting flight "don't worry about your flight, ma'am".

6.50pm came and went and we'd missed our connection, still no information forthcoming, just the tip tap of their keyboards, and the occasional conversation with a passenger as mystified as I was. These conversations were , in my opinion, abrupt, bordering on nasty and extremely accusatory, as if anyone who came to this room was in the wrong or extremely stupid and deserved punishment. I felt for anyone who approached the desk, including myself and Osh. The answers to our questions were minimal and final. I started to get uncomfortable.

8.30pm (2 hours in) The female police officer asked me to follow her. Osh got up "no just her, you sit down" was the answer. She took me to an interrogation room and told me I was under oath and then asked me my full name, my nationality, my father and mother's full names, dates of birth and nationalities, why was I in Seattle, why was I going to Alaska, was I being paid, did I know that tammy had a business there, was it a farm, was I going to work on the farm. No, I am just going to house sit and look after her dogs and chickens, that is all. I have and will not be being paid. This went on for about 25 minutes, I have the full manuscript, they gave it to me. Every single word I said and she said, typed up. She told me her supervisor would decide my fate. It was a grey area for her and they believed my having use of Tammy's house was a transaction indicating working in the USA illegally.

Silently I followed her back the way we'd come. As we went through he corridor of rooms, doors slamming forebodingly and loudly every few seconds, I noted a small cell with three army hammock beds, a simple blanket and hospital type pillow, on each one. I continued into the waiting room and she told me to sit down. Took her place again at her towering desk where I could only see the top of her head and hear her tip tapping (about me), maybe , who knows).

Osh was pulled up periodically and asked questions as he used to be a US citizen and they didn't seem to like that he decided to go back and live in the UK. He was taken and grilled as I was a few minutes later. He was gone for about 40 minutes. Grilled about the same things, but a sticking point was that he and his dad had lived in the US. They were trying to find a problem. That and the hilarity which my dog and cat sitting and chicken sitting had obviously created for this toxic group of people made me feel like a trapped animal and they didn't hide the mocking while I was crying into Osh's neck opposite the desk. He later told me he was glaring at them. We had no rights so anything he did to defend me would have made things worse.

I was called up to do three sets of fingerprints, two head shots and cheek swabs for my DNA.

I was finally called up and told that I was inadmissible to the United States of America and that I would be deported back to my original country on the first available flight the next day. All of this woman's sentences were punctuated by the sentence "do you understand?" to which , like a Stepford wife I'd dutifully say "yep".

9.30pm (3 hours in): a new police officer came in, another female. I was told to follow the two females and I was "tapped down" and felt up a little as obviously I could have secreted something about my person both inside and out, I couldn't stop crying during this bit as she asked me to spread my hands up on the wall and part my legs. They told me to breathe. They made me take off all my jewelry and they placed it in a latex glove in my luggage. I came back into the waiting room and buried myself in Osh's shoulder. I felt de-humanised. 

Another 15 minutes passed. My head was pounding and I wasn't permitted to have the nurofen in my bag because it wasn't prescriptive.

It started to dawn on me that there were two other women in the waiting room, who had been here since we came in. The three army camp beds started to make sense. I started to inwardly panic that me and Osh would be separated, no rights in this country, in trouble, illegal aliens in what is currently one of the most unfriendly countries in the world, politically.  We had hushed conversations, Osh telling me i was strong and everything would be ok. He's genuinely my hero.

10.04pm: Bed time. I was crying so hard, I hugged Osh and said goodbye? Goodnight? It was still undecided as to whether his immigration status was becoming a problem for them so I didn't really know if I'd see him in the morning or if he would be in a cell, or already deported without me? I was so scared.

Me and the two other women were led to the cell, which I now saw had a toilet and sink in it along with the three hammock beds. We were told to take off our shoes and leave them outside. The light in this room was so bright. Three luminescent strips of piercing light that hurt my already aching head. I wasn't ok, I was panicking and crying so hard. We were told there was an emergency button and that we would be brought back out at 8am the next day. 10 hours in this room.

They closed and bolted the door.

I sat on the edge of a metal bench bolted to the wall behind the camp beds, and sobbed. The other two girls said nothing to me, covered themselves with the blankets to hide from the light and they went to sleep. I went and pressed the emergency button twice to ask if I could be in the same cell as Osh but no one came. I imagine at around 11pm I crashed from so much crying, giving in to lying on the hammock. For some reason, in my mind, this wasn't real if I didn't lie on it. They'd come and get me, reunite me with Osh and tell me it was all a huge mistake.

They kept those lights on all night. We had no phones and no clock so we had no idea what time it was. I woke up and used the communal un-private toilet and washed my face and my fringe with the soap by the aluminium sink. I tried the button again as I needed my anti-anxiety meds they had taken from me earlier. My head was starting to spin as I need one every day. One of the other girls got their attention, I actually missed how. But they did come and I went to my bags to get my meds, gratefully noticing Osh's backpack had been added to my bags (he was still here). I took my pill. This black female police officer seemed to have the compassion lacking in the others we had come across and I liked her. She told me it was 4.25am. We still had 3 and a half hours in that light box. She locked us back in.

I chatted to the lady who was also up. Her name was ironically "America" and she was Venezuelan. She had also been accused of coming to the USA to work illegally. I have no idea if she was honest, I was just glad she was friendly. We both realised "Anna" the girl in the middle bed, was quite unwell and very cold so I gave up my blanket for her at that point. She had a terrible cough.

I found the next three hours quite excruciating. I wanted to know where Osh was, I was listening to every door slam, every voice and waiting for them to open the door so I knew he was safe and be with him again and most of all be out of the cell. I covered my eyes with my thin cardigan but it didn't block the light so i tried to makeshift something out of tissue paper to put over my eyes. I gave up and just sat up staring at the floor in the end. I realised they would walk past our room every 15 minutes and look in the small window at us. I waved at one point...

My head was pounding for most of the night. Jet lag and well, this situation...

7.35am: they opened the door slightly early. I was so relieved. My brain had started wondering if I would ever be let out. We filed out back into the waiting room.

7.45am Osh was let out and came to sit next to me, a face of thunder. His cell had been like a sauna and he had a pounding headache and a sore throat. He told me he wasn't taken to his cell until midnight as they kept on grilling him about him and his dad. Seemingly trying to find anything they could pin on him. He heard me come out of my cell and was relieved. He said no one checked on him the whole night.

There was a particularly condescending, seemingly more senior narcissistic officer who had been there the previous day. He showed up for his shift at 8 and he asked his colleagues why we were let out, exclaiming it would have been much easier for him if they just kept us locked up. I picture them trying to get me back into that cell now. I wouldn't have gone willingly. They didn't.

We were informed by the officers on the new shift that our flight was at 2.30pm so we had 6 and a half hours of watching muted American television which appeared quite dystopian to be honest. I couldn't wait to go home. The television watching was occasionally interrupted by conversations between the officers. The narcissist decided to have a conversation loudly with his colleague about how beautiful where me and Osh were planning to go actually is, and how it's serene and quiet and you can see the Northern Lights. I mean, what a dick!. I despised him even more after that.

Sadly, when it did come time for us to be marched and I quote "at a pace, so keep up" to our gate, it was the narcissist who took us there. He tried friendly conversation but I had sealed my voice off. I didn't trust myself. Osh, however, played the role, ensuring nothing stopped us from getting safely back onto the plane. Back to being people who count again. 

We didn't receive our phones and passports back until the plane had taken off and the seat belt light had been turned off.  Tammy had come to pick me up at the airport the night before in Fairbanks, hadn't heard a thing from me for a full day following and I now managed to text her what had happened. 

I cried my heart out as we flew back over Seattle.

That is the end of this story. To quote the lady who felt me up "Land of the free! Not today!!. I kid you not, she actually said it.