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A German tourist is fighting to be released from an immigration detention center after she was denied entry at the San Diego border and taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) last month.
Jessica Brösche, a 26-year-old German tattoo artist, is being indefinitely detained by US Customs and Border Protection after she tried to enter San Diego on 25 January from Tijuana, Mexico, with her American best friend, Amelia Lofving. The two were traveling with tattoo equipment.
“I just want to get home, you know? I’m really desperate,” Brösche told ABC News 10News in a phone interview from a detention facility.
Lofving, a designer, had just moved to Los Angeles when she met up with Brösche in Tijuana with plans to cross the border together and travel to Los Angeles, but Brösche never made it to the city.
Brösche had her German passport, confirmation of her visa waiver to enter the country, and a copy of her return ticket back to Berlin, Lofving said. But she was still pulled aside for a secondary inspection by a US Customs and Border Protection agent.
Brösche said she then spent days detained in a cell at the San Diego border before being taken into custody by Ice. The agency brought her to the Otay Mesa detention center, where she’s now been for more than a month.
According to KPBS, US Customs and Border Protection accused Brösche of planning to violate the terms of the visa waiver program by intending to work as a tattoo artist during her time in Los Angeles.
According to ABC’s 10News, she was forced to spend eight days in solitary confinement in the facility.
“She says it was like a horror movie. They were screaming in all different rooms. After nine days, she said she went so insane that she started punching the walls and then she’s got blood on her knuckles,” Lofving said of her friend’s experience.
Lofving said she asked Ice agents if Brösche could be sent back to Mexico, but they responded that her lack of legal residency would mean she would be deported back to Germany. Lofving also said she tried to get help from the German consulate in Los Angeles.
Lofving initially had no idea where Brösche was being held or if she had already been deported to Germany. It was only after pleading for help online and using the federal Detainee Locator website that she was able to track down her friend.
It would be 25 days before Lofving would find and be allowed to visit her friend at the detention, where she remains.
