Teenagers ‘arrested and strip searched in Hawaii over badly planned holiday'
Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepère, 18, arrived in Honolulu with plans to explore the island for five weeks after graduating high school.
Instead, the pair say they were interrogated for hours upon their arrival before border agents denied them entry and turned them around, according to German newspaper Ostsee Zeitung.
'It was all like a fever dream,' Ms Lepère said. '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.'
Officials are said to have become suspicious of the teenagers after learning they had not booked accommodation for their entire five-week stay in Hawaii.
The pair said they were pulled aside and allegedly subjected to body scans and strip searches before being handcuffed and given green prison uniforms.
On March 19, a day after arriving, they were taken back to Honolulu International Airport in handcuffs, where they requested to be sent to Tokyo, Japan.
Three days after their arrest, they returned home to Rostock, Germany, according to Ostsee Zeitung.
'They found it suspicious that we hadn't fully booked our accommodation for the entire five weeks in Hawaii,' Ms Pohl said.
'We wanted to travel spontaneously. Just like we had done in Thailand and New Zealand.'
The German Foreign Office told the outlet it was involved in the pair's case and provided consular support following their experience.
Around the same time as the teenager's detention, Germany updated its travel advisory for the United States to emphasise that a visa or entry waiver does not guarantee entry for its citizens.
Since taking office, Donald Trump has announced a string of immigration-related executive orders that focus on stricter border policy, tighter visa vetting procedures and a crackdown on undocumented migrants in the United States.
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