Visitors to US Deported Because Of Twitter

In another sign that the world has gone completely mad, a pair of tourists from Britain who planned to fly to America for a Hollywood holiday were instead detained by Homeland Security, questioned for 12 hours, fingerprinted, photographed and denied entry to the U.S. — because of jokes they had made on Twitter.

Leigh Bryan, an Irish national, made a joke to a friend on Twitter two weeks ago prior to his American vacation asking them if they were “free this week for a quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America.” The word “destroy,” in this British slang sense, was used to mean “party rather vigorously”, according to Bryan. However, Homeland Security decided that this tweet was obviously a real and credible threat towards America. Making the Homeland Security agents even more anxious was Bryan’s statement that he was going to be “diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!”, a reference to a quote from the show Family Guy.

Homeland Security questioned Bryan and his companion for hours, accusing them of actually having plans to dig up the body of the late Marilyn Monroe and searching their bags for spades and digging equipment, accusing Bryan’s companion of coming to be the “lookout” as he dug up Monroe’s body. As Bryan tried to explain the context, DHS agents told him (in what I’m sure was a very reasonable, rational manner) “You’ve really f***ed up with that tweet, boy.” After interrogation, they recorded the following on his charge sheet: “[He wrote] on his tweeter[sic] website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe. Also on his tweeter[sic] account Mr. Bryan posted that he was coming to destroy America.”

Leigh and his companion, Emily Bunting, were eventually deported and shipped back to the UK through Paris. Homeland Security issued a statement saying two people had been taken for “secondary interviews” and said that during those interviews, information was uncovered that “revealed both individuals were inadmissible to the United States.”

Ahem. While border security is, of course, a difficult job and one that can very easily be hit and miss, you can be forgiven for snickering up your sleeves at this one. Certainly, being detained and deported over misinterpreted slang and jokes seems to be, if nothing else, an epic waste of Homeland Security’s time and money.

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Read more: british, citizens, deported, Dhs, homeland security, irish, tweets, twitter

Photo Credit: Twitter Screenshot.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Ralph H.

1:47PM PDT on May 11, 2012

I'm so very proud.
There must be a decent place to live in this world. A place where there is a little sanity left? Please?

send a green star

Michael C.

5:30PM PST on Feb 6, 2012

Moronic Americans, sorry to all the simple morons out there.

The Dept of Homeland of Insecurity...You know them by their catchy slogan..."Keeping America Safe from Freedom and Democracy for over 10 Years."

Patrick F.

1:31PM PST on Feb 3, 2012

If these are the morons defending your country, be afraid, be REALLY afraid....

1:30PM PST on Feb 3, 2012

Homeland Security...the NEW word for moron.

Shan D.

1:49AM PST on Feb 3, 2012

"However, rather more seriously, the denial will probably prevent access to grown-up countries such as Australia, Japan and Canada." - Thom L. -

Since Prime Minister Harper loves copycatting every stupid thing the American government does, I can see something like this happening here. Except it won't be a comment about Marilyn Monroe - it'll be somebody commenting that they like pie. Or that they want to buy a pie. See, when a Canadian is completely fed up enough to make it clear to a politician just *how* completely fed up he/she is, in the past it was sometimes done by throwing or splatting a cream pie in the politician's face. But after Alberta's Ralph Klein got hit by a banana cream pie, he had the pie thrower arrested and charged with assault. The guy actually got jail time. Klein denied that he had overreacted, since the pie contained real banana slices and "it hurt." (what a waste of a perfectly good pie!). And then there was the guy who was accused of intending to throw a pie at a politician just because he happened to be walking past said politician's entourage *while carrying a piece of cheesecake he'd bought for a mid-morning snack*...

It must be true: "The two most common elements in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity."

Christy E.

8:15PM PST on Feb 2, 2012

More stupidity from a government that is violating all of our rights constantly. Absolutely ridiculous.

Mark D.

6:41PM PST on Feb 2, 2012

What do you expect from those gangs of subhuman "homeland security" bullies recruited from the ghetto with their oversized heads and underdeveloped brains. Those idiots couldn't detect a 500 pound bomb if it was wheeled past them in neon lights. Thugs enforcing the fatherland only exist to create fear and enslave the american public. It goes right along with the psychotic american government's illegal invasions, genocides and child killing Obama drones that copy Hitler's bombing of London.

Kimberlee W.

9:20AM PST on Feb 2, 2012

This makes me so glad my grandmother died before 9/11.
She was coming into LaGuardia with my mother from England and online for whatever they do when you arrive into the country when she told my mom and the party she was with that her "Rebecca" was going to blow up. My mother tried to calm her, but the line was very, very long and Grandma was starting to panic. She raised her voice a little to my mother about her "Rebecca" blowing up. She was 79 and Very frail at the time.
Today, I picture large people grabbing at her and throwing her in a private room for "consultation" which would have been a even worse nightmare.
She would have cried and stressed so badly, she probably would have had her heart give out.
Her "Rebecca" was her Ostomy Bag!! She was so upset about getting one that her doctor counseled her to name it to get over her stigma.
Thank God she never saw the country she loved so much treat her in that way. She would never have had a clue!

Sheri P.

8:34AM PST on Feb 2, 2012

I'd say those blokes might wanna think about the way they word things next time they want to party down in America...

Rob and Jay B.

8:27AM PST on Feb 2, 2012

What this article seems to miss in all of this, isn't that this was an outrageously stupid thing to do, BUT that the world's largest computer is in the US & does nothing but scan emails, phone calls & sites like this for any key words, like 'destroy America' or 'terrorism' etc, these then are kicked out for a human drone to see if it needs to be acted on & sends it to the proper authority.

Apparently this Tweet had been flagged & put into the computer database of the US by some brainless, humorless trogladyte so it popped up when these two people made the fateful decision of visit the paranoid US & had their passports scanned.

The truly big story & the one that should shock us all is the one of the US spying into our every utterance - phone call, email, tweet etc. If you think someone couldn't just disappear into a USAmerican Gulag, think again. Just look at Guantanamo, still up & running.