A British tourist who travelled to the United States for a long-awaited holiday has warned others against visiting, saying she was detained for six weeks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despite holding a valid visa. Karen Newton, 65, had travelled to the US in July 2025 with her husband, Bill, for a two-month trip across several states before heading to Canada. The holiday ended abruptly on September 26 when Canadian authorities stopped them at the border over incorrect paperwork for their car and sent them back to the US side. There, officials found that Bill’s visa had expired, though Karen’s tourist visa remained valid, The Guardian reported.
“I worried then,” she said. “I was worried for him. I thought, well, at least I am here to support him.”
Instead of being allowed to return home, the couple were detained. Karen said they were handcuffed and shackled before being taken to a border patrol station in Montana, where they spent three days sleeping on mats under foil blankets. She said she was later told she was “guilty by association” and had violated the terms of her visa by helping her husband pack for the trip.
“It just went from crazy to ridiculous. It felt like they just wanted an excuse to detain me,” she said.
The couple agreed to “self-removal” under a US government programme that offers deportees a financial incentive and paid travel home. Karen believed it would shorten their ordeal. Instead, she was transferred to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, where she remained for 42 days.
“It’s called a detention facility, but it’s really a prison,” she said, adding, “Locking doors, guards everywhere, cells, everything clamped to the floor.”
Karen said she initially slept on a thin mattress on the floor and struggled with the uncertainty of not knowing when she would be released. “It was scary. You have no way of knowing what’s going to happen.”
During her detention, she said guards told her that ICE officers receive bonuses linked to detentions. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen said. “There is all the incentive in the world to find a reason – any reason – not to let someone go.”
ICE denied the claim in a response to The Guardian. A spokesperson said, “Bonuses 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’s immigration laws, not to make large sums of money.”
Karen was eventually released in early November and flown back to the UK. She returned home to unpaid bills, lost luggage and weeks of disruption. Reflecting on the experience, she said: “You only really appreciate your freedom when you’ve had it taken away.”
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