British family says detained in US for making wrong turn

US authorities are disputing the account of two British couples who claim they were held in dire conditions with their three young children for two weeks after mistakenly straying into the US from Canada.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested the seven family members on October 2 for entering the country illegally from British Columbia where they were vacationing.

The two couples said they ended up in the United States after swerving down a road along the US-Canadian border to avoid hitting an animal.

They were deported overnight and back in Britain Wednesday, their attorney Bridget Cambria said.

Officials have disputed the family’s account of events saying their vehicle was seen on video “slowly and deliberately” driving across the border.

“A vehicle was observed via remote video surveillance system turning west onto Avenue 0 in British Columbia, Canada, at approximately 9 p.m., Oct. 2,” CPB said in a statement sent to AFP on Wednesday. “The vehicle then turned south and entered the US illegally, by slowly and deliberately driving through a ditch onto Boundary Road in Lynden, Washington.

“The vehicle traveled west on Boundary Road continuing on the United States’s side, and was pulled over by a Border Patrol agent a short time later,” the statement added.

It said record checks revealed that two of the adults — who have filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security — had previously been denied authorization to come to the US.

“Attempts were made to return the individuals to Canada, however, Canada refused to allow their return and two attempts to contact the consulate for the United Kingdom were unsuccessful,” CBP said in justifying the family’s detention.

In a sworn statement shared by immigration attorneys who helped the group, Eileen Connors, 24, one of the Britons detained with her husband and three-month-old son, gave her account of what happened, saying it was “the scariest experience of our entire lives.”

She said the group was turned over to immigration agents in Washington state after sleeping on a “dirty floor” in a border patrol station following their arrest.

They were then transferred to a detention facility across the country in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 5, where she said conditions worsened.

“This facility is frigid,” said Connors in her statement. “The staff here first told us they cannot turn on the heat in the building until the end of next month,” despite temperatures plunging at night.

– ‘They didn’t know’ –

Connors said her three-month-old son’s health has suffered as a result and he woke up one day with a swollen and teary eye and “his skin is rough and blotchy.”

She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees offered to remove the baby after she complained about conditions at the facility, echoing accounts of parents separated from their children at the US southern border.

“If we wanted, we could sign papers to allow him to be separated from us and taken to some other facility,” Connors said. “We were shocked and disgusted.”

An ICE spokesman disputed Connor’s account, describing the facility — Berks Family Residential Center — as having “an outstanding track record.”

The spokesman said the center “is regularly awarded exceptional ratings concerning the health, safety, and treatment of its residents.”

In a tweet, Cambria, who represents the family, said the CBP statement on how events unfolded did not contradict what the family said other than the claim that the car entered the US “deliberately.”

“The families were told there was video footage,” Cambria said. “They didn’t know it was the US and simply wanted to return.”

As for Connors, she said in her statement that the incident had left the family “traumatized for the rest of our lives.”

“We wish to tell our story about how the United States government treats families who dare cross the border, even by accident or mistake, and, we now know, even … families who are asking for protection, like the families who (were) detained with us,” she wrote.