Watch Out Temporary Visitors to the United States: The Trump administration and entry into the United States — The case of Molly Hill
Photo from Facebook, where Molly Hill posted about her US immigration travails
Is the US border getting tougher to navigate for temporary visitors? The New York Post reports that an Australian woman claims she was thrown in US immigration detention after arriving in Hawaii to visit her boyfriend — because officials read her diary and decided she had no plans to go home.
Molly Hill, 26, resigned from her marketing job before before the trip. She had a tourist visa and had booked and paid for return flights back from Australia.
“They were convinced I wanted to immigrate illegally because my diary had notes like ‘going away drinks’ and ‘last day at work’, things I got in order before expecting to be away for three months,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
She says officials were suspicious of her from the moment she arrived in Honolulu because of her American boyfriend, and swiftly hauled her off took her to an interrogation room while they rifled through her luggage — and her diary. After six hours, they slapped her in cuffs and took her to a detention center.
US Customs and Border Protection told News.com.au that officials believed Hill planned to get married in the United States and had the wrong kind of visa.
“Hill applied for admission as a visitor for pleasure (which means that she is only eligible to stay in the United States for a brief period of time) under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). However, upon inspection, CBP officers found that Hill presented conflicting information and was determined to be inadmissible under the VWP,” the agency told the site.
A source told Buzzfeed that officials suspected Hill and her beau were going to marry because she was carrying “birth certificate, old passports, college transcripts and training certificates in her luggage” — but the Aussie claims she just keeps all her personal documents close at hand, and they had no plans to tie the knot soon.
KJ