Scottish couple thrown in Texas jail for five weeks after visa blunder

Barbara Dixon and husband Richard Cross, from the Highlands, are to complain to US immigration officials about their treatment in a Texas jail, where they were held for five weeks after a passport error was picked up by immigration officials.

Within hours, they were held in a "processing centre" in Texas, banned from seeing each other and forced to sleep on bare mattresses in a dormitory shared with 60 other inmates.

"The mental torture was the worst. We had no idea when we were going to be let go," said Ms Dixon, 52, who is to demand in her letter that the US authorities review their procedures when dealing with illegal immigrants.

"They just wouldn't let us have a voice - they wouldn't listen when we tried to explain what had happened."

Ms Dixon told The Scotsman that she hoped to prevent anyone else from having to suffer the same ordeal and said she wanted to highlight the treatment of her fellow prisoners.

"Using open toilets cemented our loss of dignity," said Ms Dixon. "All 60 of us women were taken to an exercise yard for an hour a day, but it was so cramped you could barely move. It was horrific."

The couple stayed with friends in California at the beginning of their trip in September, then bought a Honda Civic and drove across the United States, taking in the sights in Washington DC, New Mexico and Oregon.

But they had thought their 90-day visa waiver - which had by then expired - would be automatically renewed after they crossed the border into Canada, where they stayed for a few days before re-entering the US. They say that a blunder at the Canadian border weeks earlier meant their passports had not been stamped.

"The immigration officer was chatting to us, he loved that we were Scottish and was saying how he always wanted to visit Scotland," said Ms Dixon, who married her husband on a whirlwhind trip to Las Vegas in February 2010. "I think the stamp got overlooked while we were chatting to him." Unaware, the couple, from Newtonmore, continued their trip - until they were pulled over and their car was surrounded by eight armed border control guards.

"We were classed as illegal aliens because we had stayed over the initial 90 days," said Ms Dixon, who was questioned for five hours without food and water.

"They wouldn't accept that it was a simple mistake.

"We tried to tell them we had booked return flights home, proving that we weren't planning on staying, but they wouldn't listen."They were kept at the detention centre for five weeks after their blunder was uncovered earlier this year, wearing prison uniforms and showering with their fellow inmates.

The couple were only allowed to see each other once a week, when guards stopped them from having even the most basic physical contact. "On one occasion we were pulled apart after our legs grazed against each other," said Ms Dixon.

They finally returned to the UK in April.

Mr Cross, 75, who retired from his job at BT before the trip, lost more than a stone in weight and developed high blood pressure from stress during their ordeal.

"I think we'll stick with holidays in Scotland," said Mrs Dixon. "Perhaps Spain at a push."