Immigration ban: Australian author Mem Fox detained by US customs officers

Bestselling Australian author Mem Fox was detained at the Los Angeles Airport and questioned for two hours by customs officers. Fox said she may never return to the United States after the experience.

The officers who questioned her, Fox said, seemed to have been given “turbocharged power” by President Donald Trump. Fox’s detention came as a result of the executive order on immigration. The ban was ruled against by the courts, following which a new order is expected to be rolled out that will aim to eliminate the confusion caused by the initial order.

“I have never in my life been spoken to with such insolence, treated with such disdain, with so many insults and with so much gratuitous impoliteness,” she said, adding that she was interviewed although she has travelled to the US 116 times before. Fox, some of whose bestselling works include Possum Magic and Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes , has never experienced such an incident.

"The entire interview took place with me standing, with my back to a room full of people in total public hearing and view — it was disgraceful. I felt like I had been physically assaulted which is why, when I got to my hotel room, I completely collapsed and sobbed like a baby, and I'm 70 years old,” she said, as reported by the ABC. "My heart was pounding so hard as I was waiting to be interviewed, because I was observing what was happening to everybody else in the room.”

Fox, who was headed to Milwaukee for a conference, was granted access to the country eventually. She also received a written apology over the incident.

"They accused me of coming in on the wrong visa and they were totally wrong about that. "The person who interviewed me was heavy with weaponry, was totally dressed in black with the word 'police' in hand-sized letters across his chest."

The author expressed her concern about Australia driving down the same road as the US. "I'm very frightened that Australia will go the same way as America, with extremists in power, racist hatred, ghastly speech against decent people," she said.

It is unlikely Fox will want to visit the US again. "At the moment I'm in so much shock about it, I can't imagine going back to the states," she said. "I'd hate not to go back to the states because it's been so good to me and Americans in general are not [like] the border police at LA airport."