Much loved children’s author, Mem Fox—who wrote Possum Magic—, has appeared on the Today Show Australia, primarily to promote her new book I’m Australian Too, which is about Australia’s cultural diversity, also spoke about her recent detainment in the U.S. because of Trump’s travel ban.
During her interview, she said on the experience, “I was hauled out over a minor question about my visa. The way he spoke – look – if it had happened anywhere else, I would have said ‘how dare you speak to me like that. How dare you be so insolent you rat you ars**oled bastard,’ but I didn’t want to be sent home”.
“They were sorry that it had happened but I, myself, I don’t think I’ve quite described enough what happened in that room and how it occurred, she continued
“It was so awful that I actually cannot go back. I’m too frightened to go back, my knees would be knocking in the immigration queue. I actually feel like crying while I’m talking”.
Fox also appeared on ABC’s March 13 edition of Q&A, just weeks after her late February detainment, and said, she felt the experience was “appalling” and that she felt “ashamed of being a human being”.
Also during the program, she commented, “I had been interrogated, and I use the word specifically interrogated, not interviewed. I was pulled out of line for a very small reason. The digital cameras didn't work and I was sent to a real person and that's where the trouble started”.
"The real person found out I was being paid to give a speech in the States and said, 'you've come in on the wrong visa. You need to have more questions asked', she continued
"It was the way the questions were asked. It was the way they're trying to protect their borders. It was the insolence. It was the fear that they caused in me. It was the humiliation in a public room in which everything about my finances were shouted out to the entire room. It was the way other people in the room were treated which made me ashamed of being a human being. It was not only I who was badly treated. It was appalling”.
Fox has also said she has no intentions of returning to the U.S. This last was her 170th to the country.