“You have no right here” – a Swiss woman is turned away and detained at the US border

“Number 18, are you ready for your deportation?” With these words, what a Swiss woman herself calls “a traumatic and dehumanizing nightmare” ended.

The woman, who studies education in Switzerland and works as a teacher, wanted to enter the United States as a tourist with a valid Electronic Travel Authorization (ESTA) to celebrate her birthday in New York. Instead, she was handcuffed and shackled at John F. Kennedy International Airport, interrogated for hours, and ultimately taken to a notorious prison in New Jersey.

The experience left her "emotionally disturbed and physically damaged," says the teacher, who will be called Lara* in this story. What Lara experienced is also a result of Trump's new border policy.

Lara landed in New York at 4 p.m. on April 9. The border guard asked the familiar routine questions: how long she would be staying in the U.S. and where she would be living. But instead of releasing her into the city, he said, "Follow this gentleman."

Lara spends six hours in a room with other travelers who have also been selected by border officials for further questioning—in America, this is called "flagged." Lara is 38 years old. She studied in the USA for several years on a student visa and also worked there with a corresponding permit and paid taxes. She has only been living in Switzerland again since the coronavirus outbreak. She visits her long-time friends in New York several times a year; she obtains travel authorization through ESTA.

The officers wanted to know why she traveled to the US so often. Because she loved New York and many of her friends lived there, Lara said. Then the officers demanded access to Lara's smartphone. "I had to give them access to all my social media accounts and my e-banking account. Then they disappeared with my phone for about an hour."

Because Lara not only works at a school in Switzerland but also gives online language courses and her clients include Americans, the border officials are convinced: she wants to work.

The fact that Lara brought souvenirs such as German-language books, Swiss chocolate, and her laptop, and that she had arranged to meet some of her online students for coffee in New York, strengthened the border officials' suspicions. To Lara's assurances that she didn't want to work during her vacation, the officials always responded with the same response: "You're lying."

Lara continues: "Then they threatened me: Either I officially state during the interrogation that I came to New York to work, or they'll send me to jail." The situation intimidated her. "But I still said: This isn't right. If you're going to treat me like this, I need a lawyer, and I need to be able to contact the Swiss embassy. Their response was: You have no right here, you're not an American citizen," Lara says.

Around 10 p.m., she is allowed to call an American friend of her parents, who is so close to her that she calls her aunt. The aunt informs Lara's friends in New York and her family in Switzerland. At 11:30 p.m., Lara receives the official notice that she is not allowed to enter the USA.

Instead of being put back on the next plane, Lara is placed on a chair anchored to the floor and secured with an ankle bracelet. She waits like this for two hours, unsure of what will happen next. Then she is taken to a small room and searched all over her body. In addition to the ankle bracelets, she is also handcuffed and has a chain around her stomach. "That's when I cried for the first time," Lara says.

Lara is one of two Swiss citizens who have been denied entry to the United States this year, according to the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). There are no comparable figures from previous years because the FDFA never collected them.

The German Foreign Office told the NZZ that there has been a "small double-digit number" of cases of German citizens being rejected or arrested. Three affected German citizens have already reported in various media outlets about dehumanizing detention conditions and arbitrary, violent behavior by border guards.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been several such reports; of people from Germany, France, or England, for example, who were turned away at the American border despite having valid entry papers via ESTA or even a Green Card, and who were sometimes held for weeks in so-called "detention centers."

In response to a request from the NZZ, a spokesperson for the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) indirectly confirmed that travelers from Europe and other Western countries have been increasingly subject to intensive checks since the beginning of the year. "Under the leadership of the Trump administration, we have observed a sharp decline in illegal immigration. This decline has allowed our law enforcement agencies to return to their core work, such as conducting thorough background checks and interviews."

The spokesperson left open exactly how increased deployment in one area would lead to more free capacity in another. She may attribute a deterrent effect to Trump. However, she continued, legitimate travelers have nothing to fear. "However, we advise individuals seeking to enter the United States with fraudulent intent or malicious motives: Don't even try."

Lara is taken on a prisoner transport to the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility in New Jersey. The privately run detention facility has been criticized for years due to its poor conditions and is currently at the center of protests. According to reports in the New Jersey Monitor and News 12, the facility, which has room for 250 inmates, is said to house around 350 people. In addition, access to medication, clean drinking water, and soap is often lacking.

Lara feels this too. Her period has started, she's bleeding heavily, but only after repeated requests, and when the bloodstain has already spread widely, is she given a single sanitary pad. There are no painkillers. There, covered in blood on an outhouse, she cried for the second time. Afterwards, she is given prisoner clothing. "Blue for those of us who had problems with immigration authorities, orange for prisoners who were there for a crime."

Lara spends the first five hours or so in a two-person cell with a French woman engaged to an American, but detained at the border as an illegal immigrant. Later, in an interview with the NZZ, the French woman confirms Lara's accounts of the time the two spent together in the detention center.

Both are examined by a doctor. "He was the first person to treat me with respect," says Lara. The doctor told her that since the beginning of the Trump administration, at least two Europeans seeking entry with ESTA have been arriving at the detention center every day. He hadn't observed this before. After the examination, both the Swiss and the French women are taken to the room where they await their deportation along with 20 other women.

The room should be imagined "like a large gymnasium. On the left side are three tables, on the right side there are telephones. Behind them are the beds, one next to the other. There were two toilets, two sinks, and two showers. But everything was open; there was no privacy." According to Lara, the prisoners were assigned a number instead of their names. "I was number 18."

Because she speaks German, French, Spanish, and English, Lara quickly becomes an interpreter. Some of the women begin to share their stories.

Two women from Venezuela told Lara and the French woman they'd been in this one room for a year. There are no walks through the prison yard, as you see in American films. Daylight comes through a window in the ceiling, and the air is filtered by the air conditioning, Lara says. "The Venezuelan women sleep all day, are completely apathetic because they don't know what will happen to them." Venezuela and the US don't have a stable deportation agreement. "Because they've been there for so long, the Venezuelan women were given proper long-sleeved sweaters. The rest of us only had T-shirts."

Another inmate had given birth six weeks earlier. "She had to pump her milk inside, which was then taken outside to her baby," says Lara.

A Turkish woman who studied in the US and married an American—the papers for a green card had already been submitted but not yet processed—was arrested and taken away by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while having lunch with her husband in a restaurant. "She had been in the room for eight days, crying nonstop."

At 4 p.m., exactly 24 hours after landing on American soil, Lara was picked up for deportation. She was forced to put on her blood-stained clothes again and was again shackled around her hands, feet, and stomach. At the airport, several security officers, one with a loaded gun, escorted her to her plane. Only once she was in the air did she get her passport and smartphone back.

Lara suffered bruises and abrasions from the shackles, as photographs show. The stress caused her menstrual bleeding to stop for two weeks. It took a long time before Lara could sleep for more than three hours at a time again.

After one of Lara's friends informed the Swiss consulate in New York, the consulate immediately intervened with the American authorities, the FDFA later informed her. Furthermore, the NZZ reported that the head of the Americas Department "expressed his concern about the treatment of incoming travelers at a regular meeting in April with the US Chargé d'Affaires in Bern."

"I find it problematic that Switzerland doesn't take a clearer stance when it comes to arbitrary deprivation of liberty and violations of the fundamental rights of its citizens," says lawyer Pascal Ronc. He sees Lara's case as arbitrary and a violation of fundamental freedoms and rights. "Her freedom and human dignity were violated based on the vague suspicion of possible future behavior. A violation of the law could neither be alleged against her nor proven," says Ronc. Searching smartphones and laptops is also a serious invasion of privacy and therefore, under certain circumstances, can be classified similarly to a house search.

Ronc is familiar with Lara's case because he has provided her with legal advice. However, she is not his client – ​​he sees no effective way for an individual to take legal action against the United States. Because: "The United States has not submitted itself to any international human rights court where individuals could file complaints."

Lara's Instagram account, which was apparently meticulously scoured by the US border patrol, tells the story of a woman who loves fashion, good food, and travel. In the past, she has given her online lessons from the snowy Swiss mountains, Spain, and, yes, even New York.

Like Lara, many people don't know that even minor work for a non-American employer is prohibited with an ESTA but without a work permit in the US. However, Ronc points out that this law is subject to considerable interpretation.

The fact that Lara previously sent emails and held online classes with students from various countries in the US without a work permit in no way justifies the authorities' behavior, according to Ronc. First, Lara has never been accused by the US authorities of having worked in the US during her vacations in the past. Second, this is a matter of criminal law, not border control. "Nothing about Lara's behavior justifies the treatment she endured at the hands of the US authorities."

Ronc believes it's likely that other Swiss citizens will experience the same arbitrary treatment as Lara when entering the US. "Therefore, it would be important for the FDFA to issue appropriate recommendations: not to carry work devices such as laptops and to check smartphones for potentially problematic content. It should also be specifically pointed out that the application of the law by border officials in the US has become unpredictable. What Lara experienced could happen to anyone."

* Lara's identity is known to the NZZ. She wishes to remain anonymous so that she can potentially re-enter the United States at a later date with a visa.