U.K. tourist Becky Burke has finally returned home to Monmouthshire, Wales on Tuesday after spending 19 days in a U.S. ICE detention facility.
Burke’s parents, Paul and Andrea Burke, relayed their daughter’s description of her release from ICE to BBC, saying how she was taken in “leg chains, waist chains and handcuffs,” which left her “traumatized.”
“On Monday she was taken from the detention facility, to a location close to the airport, ready to be taken to the plane,” Paul Burke said.
He added: “She said she could only walk with the support of an ICE officer”
Her father went on to say that nobody knew that his daughter had been removed from the detention center to be brought back to Wales, saying “she is not Hannibal Lecter.”
The couple is not pressing their daughter to share everything with them at once, instead letting her enjoy “some of the home comforts that most of us take for granted,” like sleeping “for as long as she wants to without fluorescent lights on 24 hours a day.”
“It must be overwhelming for her to suddenly be able to do what she wants to do when she wants to do it,” her mother said.
After 19 days of living in the same “prison clothes,” her father said she is “relishing just sitting in the garden, having a comfy bed, pillow and warm clothes.”
To pass the time while in custody, Burke would draw and write. She hopes to someday write a graphic novel about her experience.
The circumstances of how Burke was taken into custody are unclear. However, the Northwest ICE Processing Center told the BCC the detainment “related to the violation of the terms and conditions of her admission.”
Burke’s family told the outlet they believe it was related to her accommodation agreements—including receiving free accommodation for helping hosts “around the house,” which may have been understood as a violation of her visitor visa.
Monmouthshire politician Catherine Fookes spoke out on Burke’s detainment in the House of Commons on Thursday, asking Foreign Secretary David Lammy to meet with her family.
“Whilst I’m delighted she’s home, I was really disappointed and actually quite shocked to hear that she was transported to the airport in the USA in chains despite doing absolutely nothing wrong and posing no risk,” Fookes said.
“There are lot of things we need to address through political channels to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Burke’s father said.
