A Foreign Reporter Gets a Story of U.S. Paranoia

Later, I was to spend the night in a "detention tank" behind a thick glass wall, without a chair or bed. It contained only two steel benches, about 15 inches wide, a steel toilet and sink (all in full view of anyone passing by and of the camera observing all), a glaring neon light and a Big Brother-controlled television playing a shopping (!) channel all night. I found it hard to breathe in this human fish tank, yet knocking on the glass, repeatedly, brought no help. When a security officer finally walked by and I shouted through the door that I felt unwell, he wasn't interested.

In the morning, I was transferred (again in handcuffs) back to a security room, where I spent the rest of the day awaiting my evening flight back to London. I and two other detainees, whom I was not permitted to talk to, were supervised the entire time by eight sleepy, TV-watching security officers. While they ate their breakfasts, I had to ask four times for food and was shouted at before something edible was brought to me, paid for with my own money.

I later found out that mine is not the only such case: In 2003, 12 journalists were detained and deported at LAX, and one at another U.S. airport, according to Reporters Without Borders. As a detainee, I was not allowed a pen. But it is not hard to remember what I saw: a glimpse of a country hiding its deep sense of insecurity behind an abusive facade, and an arbitrary (though not unintentional) disrespect for civil liberties. Nevertheless, I am applying for a journalist's visa so I can come back and, I hope, see another America. May 3, as it happens, was World Press Freedom Day.

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Elena Lappin is a British journalist.