[Ryan N]

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/b/sunr...ained-3-weeks/

Aussie traveller detained 3 weeks
Jun 18 03:47pm

Laura McKenzie flew out of Australia last November and she will be returning with a lesson for all Australian travelers.

Her dramatic experience saw her isolated in a detention centre forced to eat with her hands and sleeping on the concrete floor of a gaol cell. All holiday memories she would rather forget.

Laura worked six months in Canada and then had a six-week holiday in The United States.

The only problem was, Laura’s plane touched down in Hawaii on the way, which started her six-month visa.

A six month visa for travelers means exactly that, from the moment you step on that nation’s tarmac. Laura’s time was up yet she continued traveling, oblivious to the dram ahead.

Despite the fact Laura never left the airport, she found out the horrifying truth of her situation when on a bus travelling through Texas last month.

At a driver changeover, an immigration official boarded the bus for a random inspection – a common occurrence in Northern America.

When he looked at her visa he found she was 20 days past her limit.

Laura was taken directly to a holding cell at an immigration centre – with all the amenities of our own famed asylum seeker detention centres – replete with concrete floor, concrete bench and an open toilet.

Her only company was a Mexican man thrown into the cell with her as she waited.

Laura had traveled so close to the Mexican border it was assumed she spoke Spanish.

After a night in a gaol cell, spent with 20 Mexican women, Laura was moved to another immigration centre for nine days, and then to a third.

Bewildered, sacred and way out of her depth, Laura was yet to face more humiliation.

She was forced to to wear stained underwear, eating spaghetti with her hands and sleeping on a concrete floor.

When she finally had a chance to call the Australian Embassy in Washington, Laura was able to speak to her mother in Adelaide, who flew straight over.

Just a week ago she saw her mother, but even then, tough US authorities had her feeling like a criminal speaking only to her mother through a perspex window.

Laura was eventually released last Wednesday and is now due to have a court appearance on July 9 before she can leave the US.

This cuts short a more extended trip she had planned to England and Europe, but now Laura is happy to lie low at home for a while. She also does not plan to travel on her own again, or to read all the VISA conditions in every foreign nation.