U.S. immigration detains European travelers, raising concerns for tourism

CBS NEWS 

Some Europeans are becoming leery of visiting the U.S., as reports of U.S. immigration authorities detaining them while traveling, for reasons that are not clear, swirl. 

A number of tourists from Europe say they have been stopped at U.S. border crossings and held at U.S. immigration detention facilities for weeks, despite holding tourist permits, work visas, or otherwise believing that they are authorized to travel to the U.S.

A backpacker from Wales was detained at the Canadian border for close to three weeks, before being permitted to fly home. A Canadian woman with a work visa was detained for 12 days at the Tijuana border, before returning to Canada. 

And German tourist Lucas Sielaff, who drove to Mexico from Las Vegas, where he was visiting his American fiancé, was locked up while returning from Tijuana. Immigration authorities accused him of violating the rules of his 90-day U.S. tourist permit, the couple said, despite being just 22 days into it. Sielaff was held for 16 days before he was permitted to fly home to Germany on his own dime. 

Sielaff and others who were detained said it was never made clear why they were taken into custody.

“What happened at the border was just blatant abuse of the Border Patrol’s power,” his fiancé, Lennon Tyler, told the Associated Press.

Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit that aids migrants, agreed that “the rationale for detaining these people doesn’t make sense.”

“The only reason I see is there is a much more fervent anti-immigrant atmosphere,” Rios told the Associated Press.

U.S. authorities did not respond to a request from The Associated Press for figures on the number of tourists that have been held at detention facilities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the AP that Sielaff was deemed “inadmissible” by Customs and Border Protection, without providing more specifics. Generally speaking, they said that “if statutes or visa terms are violated, travelers may be subject to detention and removal…