Demand the Border Patrol Stop Abusing Foreign Tourists

Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Honolulu from Auckland with plans to explore Hawaii before continuing to California and Costa Rica. However, their flexible travel style — including a lack of pre-booked lodging for their planned five-week Hawaii stay — apparently raised red flags for the jack-booted thugs at the Customs and Border Patrol, who thought the appropriate response was to throw them in jail, humiliate them with strip searches and prison jumpsuits, and then lock them up. 

Conditions described included sleeping on thin, moldy mattresses, using rudimentary toilets, and being warned by guards to avoid expired food. They were then deported.

Demand the Border Patrol stop abusing foreign tourists!

This is only the latest horror story to emerge about the CBP’s appalling new approach to dealing with tourists. Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian woman who was reapplying for a U.S. work visa, was detained without explanation on March 3 at the Mexican border near San Diego and spent 12 days in detention before returning home. Rebecca Burke, a backpacker from Britain, tried to enter the US from Canada in February and was thrown in prison for THREE WEEKS. U.S. citizen Lennon Tyler was chained to a bench by border agents when her German fiancé, Lucas Sielaff, was accused of violating the rules of his 90-day U.S. tourist permit while trying to enter from Mexico.

There is absolutely no good reason that the Border Patrol should be treating tourists with such sadistic hostility. The agents responsible need to be fired immediately and new rules instituted to put an immediate end to these incidents.

Fire the Border Patrol agents who strip-searched teen German tourists!