German Tourists Detained for Weeks, Then Deported From U.S.

Chained, detained for weeks and eventually deported, two German tourists trying to enter the United States were recently tangled in a system responding to President Trump’s push to sharply restrict entry and deport people en masse.

The cases of Jessica Brösche, held for 46 days, and Lucas Sielaff, held for 16, and accounts of their rough handling by immigration officers, have grabbed headlines in Germany as a sign of what being caught on the wrong side of the White House’s immigration policy could mean for European travelers.

Tourists from most European countries, including Germany, generally enjoy visa-free travel to the United States for up to 90 days. But Mr. Sielaff and Ms. Brösche were stopped, separately, at the San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, told that they were being denied entry and sent to a crowded detention center, according to their own accounts and those of their friends.

Mr. Sielaff said he was denied a translator and had trouble understanding what was happening to him. Ms. Brösche’s friends said she was kept in solitary confinement for nine days. By their accounts, both were flown back to Germany without a clear understanding of why they were detained in the first place.

“Sometimes I just wake up because I have nightmares of this situation and what happened,” Mr. Sielaff, 25, said in an interview. “And I just try to go for walks and calm down.”

The family of a tourist from Britain, Becky Burke, 28, says she has been held for more than two weeks in Washington State, similarly caught up in the system but unsure why.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, did not respond on Thursday to requests for comment on their cases.

Ms. Brösche was detained at the border on Jan. 25, according to an online fund-raising campaign that friends set up to lobby for her release. She was traveling on the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, available to tourists from countries who do not need a need a visa to travel to the United States but are still required to declare the purpose of their visit. She told the German newspaper Bild that she had completed the authorization and planned to enter the United States after spending a week in Tijuana.

At the border, officials flagged issues with her documentation, according to the online petition.

Ms. Brösche, a 29-year-old tattoo artist, could not be reached for an interview. But Nikita Lofving, a friend who has spoken with her, said in an interview that she thought officials saw the tattooing equipment in Ms. Brösche’s luggage and might have concluded that she planned to work in the United States, violating the terms of visa-free entry.

She was sent to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. The authorities told her she would be detained for “a couple of days,” according to the online fund-raiser, but “what followed was an alarming sequence of events: after being denied entry, Brösche was placed in solitary confinement for nine days.”

She remained at the center for more than six weeks, friends said, her case apparently lost in a border enforcement backlog.

“Just the sheer fact of not knowing what’s going on drove her insane,” Ms. Lofving said. “She could barely sleep the whole time she was in there. She was up at night crying.”

Ms. Brösche arrived back in Germany on Wednesday.

“She will need a few days to recover but she wants to speak out when she’s been fed and slept and probably cried a bit in her mom’s arms,” Ms. Lofving said.

Mr. Sielaff said he had traveled to the United States on Jan. 27 to see his partner, Lennon Tyler, an American psychologist who lives in Las Vegas. Three weeks later they drove to Tijuana for medical treatment for Dr. Tyler’s dog, but when they attempted to return on Feb. 18, they didn’t get past the border checkpoint.

He said he struggled to hear the border control officer questioning him, and gave a muddled answer. He and Dr. Tyler said the officers asked about his place of residence, suggesting that he had been illegally living in the United States, not just visiting, and then taken for questioning.

After Mr. Sielaff was bundled off to an interrogation room, he said, his repeated requests for a German translator were denied. He said the written report of his interrogation did not accurately reflect what he had said, or even the questions he had been asked.

“I said, I don’t live here, and I have to go back to Germany before the 90 days, and they didn’t even listen to me,” Mr. Sielaff said.

After more than an hour of questioning, he was denied re-entry to the U.S. and was chained to a bench along with other travelers.

Outside, Dr. Tyler said in an interview that she was also trying to get answers from officials. In response, she said, they searched her car, and when she raised objections, two bulky ICE officers detained her and took her to a separate room, where she was subjected to a humiliating body search.

“For the first time in my life, I’m in handcuffs,” she said. “As they’re walking me into a building, they’re twisting my arms.”

After the body search, she, too, was chained to a bench for a time before being released, she said, and repeatedly asked, “Why am I being detained? Is this legal? Can you do this to a United States citizen?”

She caught a glimpse of Mr. Sielaff as he was being led to the bathroom, and it was the last time she saw him in person. Dr. Tyler has now started a civil claim over her detention, her lawyer said.

“I threw my arms around him, and we both had tears in our eyes,” Dr. Tyler said in an interview. “And I said, I’m going to get a lawyer. I’m going to get you out, I promise you.”

Mr. Sielaff was held at the border post for two more days, sleeping on a bench under a Mylar blanket, and then transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center. For two weeks there, he said, he shared a cell with eight other people, and waited in long lines to heat his food in the one microwave oven shared by more than 120 people.

He said the only way he was given to communicate with the ICE agents assigned to his case was through a tablet computer shared among inmates — but he didn’t know who those agents were.

“I asked so many people if they know who my ICE officer is,” he said in an interview. “I don’t even know who it was in the end.”

Dr. Tyler called the immigration authorities daily, she hired lawyers who also called them, she gave news media interviews and she reached out repeatedly to a German Consulate. Eventually, last week, Mr. Sielaff was allowed voluntary deportation, on a flight that cost him $2,744.

“My lawyer said bother them until they let him go,” Dr. Tyler said. “And that’s what Lucas and I did. We just made ourselves a nuisance.”