Visiting America: 19 Days in an I.C.E. Facility

While on holiday in the Pacific Northwest, a 28-year-old British cartoonist was shackled and detained in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) facility for 19 days. As family mounted a campaign to free her, Burke began to document the lives of ordinary, innocent women — including her own — and their attempts to survive the violation of their legal and human rights.

In this work of graphic memoir/journalism, British cartoonist Burke tells the story of how, in February 2025, as she was attempting to cross the border into Canada from Washington State, an innocent technicality led to hours of terrifying interrogation and, eventually, unjust detainment in an I.C.E. facility (run by the for-profit GEO corporation) for 19 days.

In vivid color and telling detail, Visiting America immerses readers in her experiences: her fear, despair, disorientation, and her fellow detainees’ attempt to help her acclimate. Burke began to document, in comics form, the difficulty of navigating its haphazard, callous bureaucracy, rife with misinformation, stonewalling, and threats. As her mental and physical conditions worsen—despite the best efforts of the women to take care of each other—a campaign to free her mounted by friends and family garners international support.

This is not only her own story, but those of the strength, spirit, and humor of the other women—mothers, workers, people fleeing war, genocide, and abuse—whose situations were even more precarious and desperate.They are trapped as they were in a cruel, horrifying, and rapidly worsening system with no place safe to return to. Burke includes an epilogue with updates about some of the women she was detained with.