Visiting America: 19 Days in an I.C.E. Facility Preview

 

Between 2011 and 2017, my wife and I visited England five times. While exploring different regions of the country, we also traveled to sites where our favorite British TV shows were filmed, and places that inspired British authors. Along the way, there were plenty of discoveries. And as I navigated a dark period of my life, these trips helped me embrace a better future. 

What would a British citizen discover when she visited the United States in 2025? And would her experiences provide the same sense of rejuvenation I found in my visits to her homeland?

Here's all the info from Fantagraphics:

 

  

Visiting America: 19 Days in an I.C.E. Facility Preview

Writer & Artist: R. E. Burke

Publisher: Fantagraphics

Book Description: Paperback, 280 Pages, 8.2” x 10.6”

Price: $29.99

ISBN: 979-8-8750-0468-1

Release Date: May 2027

 

 

A Shocking Graphic Memoir

by R.E. Burke

 

 

While on vacation in the Pacific Northwest, a 28-year-old British cartoonist was shackled and detained in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) facility for 19 days. As her family mounted a campaign to free her, R.E. Burke documented the lives of the ordinary, innocent women she found herself incarcerated with and their attempts to survive the immoral violation of their legal and human rights.

 

In this work of graphic memoir and journalism, British cartoonist R. E. Burke tells the story of how, in February 2025, as she was attempting to cross the border into Canada from Washington State, an innocent technicality led to hours of terrifying interrogation and unjust detainment in an I.C.E. facility (run by the for-profit GEO corporation) for 19 days.

 

In vivid color and startling detail, Visiting America immerses readers in her experiences: her fear, despair, disorientation, and her fellow detainees’ attempts to help her acclimate. Burke documents in comic form the difficulty of navigating a haphazard, callous bureaucracy rife with misinformation, stonewalling, and threats. As her mental and physical conditions worsen, despite the best efforts of the women to take care of each other, a campaign to free her mounted by friends and family garners international support.

 

Visiting America is not only her own story, but the stories of the strength, spirit, and humor of the other women — mothers, daughters, workers, innocent people fleeing war, genocide, and abuse — whose situations are even more precarious and desperate. They are trapped in a cruel, horrifying, and rapidly worsening system with no safe place to return to. Burke’s memoir includes an epilogue with updates about some of the women she was detained with.

 

Visiting America is potent evidence for the graphic memoir’s power to share our most vulnerable stories. Burke’s pages demand the reader’s attention, and her story demands a nation to take action.

 

Now, let's take a look inside:

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Fantagraphics for sharing this preview with us. 

 

About The Author

R.E. Burke is a comic absorber/creator/admirer from Wales. She studied English and Philosophy at Bristol University and earned a postgraduate degree in Publishing Media at Oxford Brookes. She has made mini comics and zines alongside various jobs and has shifted from a full-time corporate position to part-time nannying to dedicate more time to art. Burke now lives and draws in London.

 

She has been banned from visiting America for ten years.

 

For more on Visiting America: 19 Days in an I.C.E. Facility, visit the Fantagraphics website.