Two teenage girls from Germany were detained, arrested, and deported at an airport in Hawaii after immigration officials said it was suspicious they had not booked a hotel room.
Backpackers Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Honolulu from Auckland while undergoing a round-the-world trip. The duo planned to spend five weeks in Hawaii before moving onto California and Costa Rica for the next legs of their journey.
But despite having ESTA travel authorization, immigration officials accused them of attempting to enter the U.S. to work illegally, and they were placed in handcuffs and taken to a nearby detention center they later learned was a deportation facility.
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Upon arrival, they were subjected to full-body scans, strip searches and forced to wear green prison jumpsuits, German outlet Ostee Zeitung reports. They were then placed in a holding facility with serious criminals, including an alleged murderer who had been locked up for 18 years, and were forced to spend the night in a freezing cold double cell.
“It was all like a fever dream,” Maria told the German outlet. “It was a shock; we didn’t expect it. We had already noticed a little bit about what was going on in the U.S. But at the time, we didn’t think it was happening to Germans. That was perhaps very naive. We felt so small and powerless.”
After a sleepless night in the freezing cell, the girls were woken early and escorted back to the airport in handcuffs. Upon arrival, they were forced to board a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Tokyo and were told they would receive their passports back once they arrived in Japan.
Included in their travel documents were interrogation transcripts signed by the girls, which “contained sentences we didn’t actually say,” said Charlotte after the ordeal. “They twisted it to make it seem as if we admitted that we wanted to work illegally in the US.”
Upon arriving in Tokyo, the girls were shipped home on a flight via Qatar, which they say helped them come to terms with the ordeal. Both of them say they have processed the incident well, but are upset their backpacking journey has been marred by such a black mark by U.S. authorities. “I sometimes think about how wonderful the time in Hawaii would have been and what we would have experienced there,” said Charlotte.
The ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) allows citizens from certain countries to travel to the U.S. for short stays without requiring a visa.
But recent changes mean that ESTA authorization or a U.S. visa is not sufficient enough to automatically allow the holder to enter the USA, and that the final decision rests with immigration officials and border authorities.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.
