Molly Hill’s three-month holiday was meant to be a romantic vacation to Honolulu to reunite with her American boyfriend.
But the 26-year-old woman never made it through customs and her boyfriend was left waiting at baggage claim.
US authorities stopped the Melbourne woman when she stepped off the plane in Hawaii after they spotted two innocuous details in her diary.
Appearing on The Project, Molly explained how the entries “birthday/going away drinks” and “official last day” at work gave the impression she had plans to stay illegally in the US beyond her tourist visa.
“It was very surreal. By that point I’d been interrogated for six or seven hours and then they told me that they’d reached their decision that I would be denied entry on that day,” she recounted.
There were no available flights left to Australia so Molly was held overnight in a nearby detention centre.
“It was described to me as ‘like jail’ but you won’t get any phone calls,” she said.
She first shared the horrifying details of her detention in a Facebook post.
“I was frisked, made to undress in front of an officer and show that there was nothing in my hair or mouth, and asked to ‘squat and cough’ which was absolutely mortifying,” she wrote.
Seeing the light in the situation, Molly compared the ordeal to the Netflix prison show Orange Is The New Black.
“I was provided a prison uniform (a la Orange Is The New Black but in green) and to add insult the officer gave me a size S bra and size L everything else,” she joked.
She was offered a blanket and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – but little more.
“I couldn’t believe I was in the same place as the chick whose boyfriend convinced her to drive 70 lb’s of heroin and meth over the Mexican border.”
Molly is now back in Australia and plans for her boyfriend to make the trek here. Hopefully our border officials are a little kinder.
