Karen and Bill’s American vacation

Incompetence and malevolence make for a classic fascistic combination. This story from the Guardian needs to be read in full to be truly appreciated.

The dream holiday ended abruptly on Friday 26 September, as Karen and Bill were trying to leave the US. When they crossed the border, Canadian officials told them they didn’t have the correct paperwork to bring the car with them. They were turned back to Montana on the American side – and to US border control officials. Bill’s US visa had expired; Karen’s had not.

“I worried then,” she says. “I was worried for him. I thought, well, at least I am here to support him.”

She didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an ordeal that would see Karen handcuffed, shackled and sleeping on the floor of a locked cell, before being driven for 12 hours through the night to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Karen was incarcerated for a total of six weeks – even though she had been travelling with a valid visa.

Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. “I don’t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,” she says. “I am not a dangerous criminal. I didn’t enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there.”

So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says. . . .

Karen and Bill were shackled at the wrists , waist and ankles and bundled into a vehicle. Karen doesn’t know how long they were on the road for. “It just seemed to be a never-ending day.” They arrived at Sweetgrass border patrol station in Montana in the middle of the night, and were held there for three days, sharing a cell without beds; they slept on mats on the floor, under foil blankets. “I was very nervous and frightened the whole time. And I was chilled to the bone – I couldn’t warm up.”

They were interviewed separately. Karen was not offered a lawyer; she wasn’t entitled to one, she says, because she had been detained, rather than arrested. She didn’t think she needed one, anyway. “I just thought, ‘When they listen to me, when they come to their senses, they are going to let me go.’ I thought they might escort me to the airport and put us on a plane – hopefully both of us. But that didn’t happen.”

Bill had been working in the US with a valid work permit, but did not have a green card – fed up with the appeals process, he had decided to leave and retire back in the UK. Karen was told that she was “guilty by association”, and that she had broken the terms of her valid B2 tourist visa by helping her husband pack for the trip. “It just went from crazy to ridiculous. It felt like they just wanted an excuse to detain me.”

There was a way to make things easier, the agent said: Bill and Karen could volunteer for self-removal. Last May, the White House announced Project Homecoming, a scheme whereby so-called “illegal aliens” could opt for self-deportation. Anyone who agrees to it gets their flight home paid by the US government, as well as an “exit bonus” payment of $1,000. (The Department of Homeland Security announced on 21 January 2026 that the bonus had increased to $2,600 to “celebrate one year of Trump”.) Project Homecoming was funded by repurposing $250m previously intended to be spent on refugee aid. . . .

The Newtons were transferred in shackles once again. A border control SUV drove them from Sweetgrass to Spokane, in Washington state, where they waited for an hour before being put on what Karen calls a “prison van”, and taken to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.

“It’s called a detention facility, but it’s really a prison,” she says. “Locking doors, guards everywhere, cells, everything clamped to the floor – it’s how I imagine a prison to be. Prison would actually be better, because if you’re in prison, you get a sentence – they tell you how long you are going to be there.”

Karen was given a grey sweatshirt and jogging bottoms to wear and issued with an ID card and wristband. She didn’t allow herself to be afraid. “I didn’t want to give it head space.” I was just in disbelief, incredulous that this could happen.” . . .

While the Northwest Detention Center is an ICE facility, it is run by GEO, a private company. Aside from her experience with the first guard who took her to her cell, Karen says the staff were “nice enough” to her. None of them could understand why she was there. “One of them said to me, ‘You need to find a pro bono lawyer and sue.’” Another guard turned out to be British. “I had several conversations with her. She said, ‘I can understand them holding your husband, but I don’t understand why they would hold you.’”

It was during these conversations that Karen was told repeatedly that ICE agents are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “I was told this by multiple sources,” she says. “There is all the incentive in the world to find a reason – any reason – not to let someone go.”

Everybody enjoy their $20,000 World Cup visit. Just make sure you have a lawyer on speed dial, not that it’s likely to help.

Seriously, FIFA should do the right thing here and move all the matches scheduled to be played in the US to the other two host nations (Canada and Mexico). And yes I realize that as a practical matter the English language phrase “FIFA should do the right thing” is pretty much equivalent to colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

The Emperor—so they say—has sent a message, directly from his death bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun. He ordered the herald to kneel down beside his bed and whispered the message in his ear. He thought it was so important that he had the herald speak it back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of verbal message by nodding his head. And in front of the entire crowd of those witnessing his death—all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and all the great ones of his empire are standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of stairs—in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forwards easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvellous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace. Never will he win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the courtyards through the second palace encircling the first, and, then again, through stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes.

Kafka, “An Imperial Message”