Brits’ border trauma

Family held in detention after ‘accidentally’ crossing into US

SEVEN members of an extended British family who made an unauthorised crossing into the US from Canada are being held in federal custody at a Pennsylvania detention centre nearly two weeks after their arrest, their lawyer says.

However, US border officials defended their handling of the case by disclosing that two of the adults had previously been denied entry to the country. The family said they blundered into Washington state while trying to avoid an animal in the road on the Canadian side and have since been “treated like criminals” by their US jailers, forced to bide their time in a series of cold and unsanitary immigration facilities as they await deportation to England. The detainees include an infant and two-year-old twins.

Their lawyer, Bridget Cambria, lodged a formal complaint over the family’s treatment with the US Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general and civil rights office. She described the situation as a “very bizarre” case of federal overreach.

“What is bothersome for me as a lawyer, and I guarantee for them, was the lack of common sense at almost every stage of their apprehension and detention,” Ms Cambria said.

US officials assert the family of Eileen and David Connors crossed the border on purpose, noting their vehicle was observed “slowly and deliberately” driving through a ditch to cross into US territory in Blaine, Washington.

The agency said that border agents tried returning the family to Canada, but Canada refused to have them back. After making two attempts to contact British consular officials, the border patrol said it turned the family over to US immigration officials.

Ms Connors, 24, who is being held in Pennsylvania with her husband David, their three-month-old son, and other family members, said US officials had mistreated them.

“We will be traumatised for the rest of our lives by what the United States Government has done to us,” she wrote in an affidavit.