An Australian woman who was deported from the US after visiting her American husband stationed in Hawaii says she was detained in prison overnight alongside murderers before getting sent home.
Nicolle Saroukos, 25, of Sydney, says she was held in federal prison overnight after trying to enter the country with her mother so the two could visit her husband, Matt, a US army lieutenant stationed on Oahu, Hawaii News Now reported.
Saroukos, who has visited three times since getting married last December, said things quickly turned chaotic after border officials at Daniel K Inouye International airport flagged her for extra screening.
The officer checking passports “went from completely composed to just yelling at the top of his lungs, telling my mother to go stand at the back of the line and to excuse my language, ‘shut up’,” Saroukos recalled.
“So I automatically started crying because that was my first response,” she said.
After Saroukos and her mother were taken to a holding room where their bags and phones were searched, she was bombarded with questions, including about her former work as a police officer and whether her tattoos were gang-related to her marriage to an American.
“When I did say that I was married to somebody in the US army, the officers laughed at me. They thought it was quite comical. I don’t know whether they thought I was telling the truth or not,” she said.
Officers also allegedly told Saroukos, who was only planning on staying for a three-week visit, that she had too many clothes in her suitcase.
“So because of that, they assumed I was going to overstay my visa,” she said.
Saroukos was held for more screening, including fingerprints and a DNA swab, while her mother was allowed to go. She was then denied entry to the US and told she would be deported back to Australia after spending the night in prison, she said.
“[The officer] said ‘So, basically, what is going to happen is we’re going to send you to a prison overnight where you will stay’”, she said. “Not detention center, he said prison, and I automatically just, I started crying again.”
“Because when you think prison, you think, big time criminals. I don’t know who I’m being housed with,” she said.
According to Saroukos, border officials told her they would let her husband know she was being deported – but they never did.
She was then put through a body cavity search before being paraded through the airport in handcuffs and taken to the federal detention center.
“They stated, ‘No, you’re not under arrest. You haven’t done anything wrong, and you’ll be facing no criminal charges.’ So I was very confused as to why this was all happening,” she said.
After arriving at the prison, Saroukos was strip-searched and detained with women who had been convicted of murder and drug offences, according to the report.
She shared a cell with a woman from Fiji who was also denied entry and awaiting deportation. She was also not allowed to make a phone call to her husband or mother to let them know what happened.
Saroukos said that the following morning, she was brought back to the airport and received a call from the Australian consulate general in Hawaii, who had been contacted by her mother when they were separated and helped get the two on the same returning flight home.
Eventually, she was able to connect with her husband over the phone.
“I think we were both just very emotional. We hadn’t spoken to each other in 24 hours. He didn’t know where I was or whether I was safe,” she said.
“It’s not only myself, it’s my mother and my husband that also had to endure that pain, my husband being a current serving member, to serve his country and to be treated in that way I find very disgusting,” she said.
Saroukos’s husband is now on leave with her in Sydney after waiting hours for her at the airport and receiving no answers.
She said the horrifying experience “made it physically impossible for me to even ever enter the United States ever again”.
“I felt like my world came crashing down. I felt like my marriage was over when they told me that,” she added. “That’s something that they’ve taken away from me as well.”
A US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told Hawaii News Now that entry decisions are complex and taken very seriously, with many factors considered in each decision.
