A student has told how he was handcuffed and bundled into a US prison cell after falling foul of a little known rule under the Visa Waiver Program.
Australian Jack Dunn, 23, was travelling to the US for a backpacking holiday, without any fixed plans about where he was going to travel, reported the Daily Star.
Arriving at Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii he was asked by border security whether he had a flight booked out of the US.
He told them he had one booked to Mexico which failed to comply with the Visa Waiver Program's rules, which are also used for British citizens.
“You’re going to have to come with me,” he was told at the airport.
Travellers entering the US under the Visa Waiver Program are required to have a ticket already booked to another place, but not one in a bordering country or adjacent island.
Jack said he was questioned for hours, eventually attempting to book a flight to Panama from a worker's phone as he didn't have access to the internet.
Jack told news.au.com : "But that was $500 (£400) and I didn’t have that in my account and then I was trying to explain to the [US Customs and Border Protection officer] that I just needed internet to transfer money across."
The border officer appeared to not even consider that Jack had made an innocent mistake, he claimed
Jack was said to be unable to “overcome the presumption of an intended immigrant” in a transcript of the immigration interview seen by news.com.au.
After being told he would be flown back to Sydney the following day, Jack was handcuffed and taken to the "scary" Federal Detention Center in Honolulu.
He claimed he was strip-searched and put in cells including one smeared with blood and faeces on the walls.
“When you’re not in your own country you have no control over what’s going to happen to you so I was kind of thinking I would never get out,” he said.
Other inmates howled as he was taken to his cell, where his cellmate "talked to himself and punched the walls".
Jack spent around 30 hours in prison in total, during which he said he was refused contact with his family.
His family said they only discovered something was wrong after a border official rang them at 5.30am, saying Jack was safe but giving no further details.
A US CBP spokesperson told news.au.com: “Under the Visa Waiver Program, applicants must have a round-trip ticket that would transport the traveller out of the United States to any other foreign port or place as long as the trip does not terminate in contiguous territory or an adjacent island; except that the round-trip ticket may transport the traveller to contiguous territory or an adjacent island, if the traveller is a resident of the country of destination."
