The US has been seeing a sharp decline in the number of foreigners booking trips this year, and the experience of two German teenagers trying to visit Hawaii probably won't help much. The two females ended up strip-searched, detained, and deported, reports the UK Times. Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, have told their tale to German media, explaining that they arrived at Honolulu Airport on March 18 and planned to visit Hawaii's various islands over the course of five weeks before leaving for California and then Costa Rica.
However, they evidently aroused suspicion because they didn't have reservations booked—they had planned to wing it. As the Beat of Hawaii explains, border officials apparently feared they intended to stay in the country long-term by working illegally. While the two had approval to travel to the US from the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, they learned the hard way that ESTA documents don't guarantee entry into the US, per USA Today.
The pair say they were subjected to a strip-search after hours of questioning, then given prison uniforms for a one-night stay in a deportation facility in Hawaii before being flown out of the country. "It was all like a fever dream," Lepere told Germany's Ostsee-Zeitung newspaper. "We had already noticed a little bit of what was going on in the US. But at the time, we didn't think it was happening to Germans. That was perhaps very naive. We felt so small and powerless." (More tourism stories.)
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