Birmingham Mail columnist relives day he was detained by armed border guards

Nov 6 2009 by Catherine Lillington, Birmingham Mail

BIRMINGHAM Mail columnist Mike Olley has relived the moment he and his wife were surrounded by armed border patrol guards who put them under detention.

It was during a two-week sailing holiday on Lake Ontario that US immigration held the pair.

Broad Street manager Mike is convinced homeland officials were heavy-handed because they did not think his wife Lorraine could be British, because she is black.

The 49-year-old, who lives in Sutton, had sailed into a port he described as a sleepy village and got on to a video phone to inform the authorities of his arrival.

He said: “This guy then turned up in a green uniform and he had got his hand on a weapon. That turned the atmosphere a little bit.

“I ended up with five armed border patrol who placed me and my wife under detention for in excess of an hour until a customs official came along who realised what was going on.”

Before making the trip, Mike had obtained a special visa in his passport which allowed him to enter America on an unregistered vessel.

He added: “I got two feelings, one was that the immigration officials – who they were telling me that prior to doing the job in upstate New York had been on the border patrol down in New Mexico – didn’t understand what the various permits in our passports were all about so they placed us under detention.

“But another reason – and this is quite a shocking thing to say but I will say it because I solidly believe it – my wife is of Afro-Caribbean extraction and I don’t think a lot of Americans realise that British people are black.”