"Becky’s face began to appear in the newspapers they received at the facility. At one point, her face flashed up on one of the three TV screens they had in her dorm. “Everyone clapped. After that, a few people came up to me and said, ‘Can you put me on TV, too?’” She feels very guilty that she was able to leave. “I was aware that it was from a major position of privilege that the press listened to this story. I was a British tourist, I had these images of my trip on Instagram, and I had contacts with journalists, so I was very lucky. And I wanted the same thing that Ice wanted, which was for me to go home.”

At lunchtime on 17 March, officers came into the dorm, barked Becky’s name and told her to get ready to go. She had hidden some of her drawings among her official paperwork – her signed transcript and the document declaring her an illegal alien – in the hope she could smuggle them out. She wasn’t allowed to tell her family she was on her way home, but one of the women offered to ring her parents to notify them. Becky was shackled at the ankles, wrists and waist, and then made to shuffle out into a van."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre?CMP=share_btn_url

"On her first day in the facility, Becky asked for a scrap of paper and a pen, and began to draw the inmates on the table next to her. She was immediately inundated with portrait requests. A Mexican woman called Lopez, who had a photo of her children stored on one of the iPads, told Becky she would buy her some paper and colouring pencils from the commissary if Becky drew her kids. She soon became the dorm’s unofficial artist-in-residence, with women huddling around the dirty mirrors to make themselves look presentable before they sat for her. They would decorate their cells with Becky’s drawings, or send them to their families. Lopez declared herself Becky’s manager. “She kept saying, ‘Becky, you need to ask for stuff in exchange. Ask for popcorn.’ And I’d be like, ‘Lopez, I don’t need anything.’ I thought, I’m here briefly, you’re stuck here a long time. I’m not going to take your food away from you.”

The majority of the women were from Latin American countries, but some were from India, China, Iran, Afghanistan and Gaza. “Most of them were asylum seekers, but there was this handful of new people who had come in recently who did not know why they were here.”"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre?CMP=share_btn_url

"Workaway warns users that they “will need the correct visa for any country that you visit”, and that it is the user’s responsibility to get one, but it doesn’t stipulate what the correct visa is for the kind of arrangements it facilitates in any given country. Becky had always travelled with a tourist visa in the past – including to the US in 2022 – without any problems. She checked that work visas were only required for paid work in Canada. She had had months to plan her trip, and would have applied for a work visa if it was necessary, she says.

But the Canadian officials told Becky they’d determined she needed a work visa. She could apply for one from the US and come back, they said. Two officers escorted her to the American side of the border. They talked to the US officials. Becky doesn’t know what was said."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre?CMP=share_btn_url