Two German teenagers were reportedly detained by federal customs officers while attempting to enter Hawaii by plane and were kicked out of the United States after authorities deemed their trip “suspicious.” This is the latest in a string of incidents involving German tourists.
German citizens, Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Hawaii on March 18 with plans to travel around the U.S. for five weeks as a celebratory trip following high school graduation, according to the German outlet Ostsee Zeitung. They then set their sights on visiting California before heading south to Costa Rica in Central America.
Despite having secured an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), a U.S. document that allows certain foreigners to travel into the U.S. for a short stay without a visa, the two women were questioned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Honolulu airport for several hours. An ESTA is not a guarantee of admission into the U.S.
“They found it suspicious that we hadn’t fully booked our accommodations for the entire five weeks in Hawaii,” Pohl told the outlet, according to a translation by the New York Post.
Officers conducted strip searches and full-body scans before moving Pohl and Lepere to an off-site detention site, where they were held on thin mattresses and offered food they claimed was expired.
The teens were informed the following morning that they would not be admitted into the U.S. but would be returned to their home country. They requested to go to Japan.
The German Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The German government told the Washington Examiner last month that it was investigating whether U.S. immigration policy has recently shifted after three separate incidents in which its citizens with legal documents were denied admission at ports of entry and detained.
A German government official told the Washington Examiner that Berlin was in “close contact” with the U.S. government about the incidents.
“The relevant Consulates General of the Federal Republic of Germany are aware of the cases and have been in close contact with the relevant U.S. authorities as well as with the families of the concerned persons,” the German official wrote in an email.
The three previous incidents that German officials are investigating involve two tourists and a green card holder who were arrested while attempting to enter the U.S. within the past two months.
In one instance, legal permanent U.S. resident Fabian Schmidt was detained after flying into Boston and then transferred to a federal immigration detention facility in Rhode Island earlier this month. Schmidt’s mother, Astrid Senior, told WGBH that her 34-year-old son was strip-searched and given a cold shower by customs officials at the airport.
While being detained at the airport, he fainted and was taken to the hospital before being transferred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.
In the second incident, 29-year-old tattoo artist Jessica Brösche was detained on Jan. 25 while attempting to drive with a U.S. citizen friend from Tijuana in northern Mexico to San Diego, California.
Brösche was visiting the U.S. under the ESTA Visa Waiver Program, according to a GoFundMe page set up by a friend on her behalf. Customs officials told Brösche that she would be detained for several days, but she was transferred to and held at ICE’s Otay Mesa Detention Center for six weeks before being released and returned to Germany.
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Lucas Sielaff, 25, entered the U.S. on a tourist visa and traveled to Tijuana at the same port of entry where Brösche was arrested. On his return trip to the U.S. on Feb. 18, Sielaff was arrested and detained for three weeks, he recounted in an interview with Swiss media outlet Tages-Anzeiger.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that inspects people seeking admission, did not return a request for comment.
