Posted in: Comics, Fantagraphics | Tagged: Becky Burke, Graphic Memoir, ICE, immigration, R.E. Burke
R.E. Burke’s Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility, In 2027
R.E. Burke’s Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility, graphic novel, memoir and comics journalism from Fantagraphics in May 2027
Article Summary
- Fantagraphics will publish R.E. Burke’s Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility on May 11, 2027.
- The graphic memoir recounts Burke’s 19-day ICE detention after a 2025 US-Canada border technicality.
- Visiting America blends memoir and comics journalism, telling Burke’s story and those of fellow detainees.
- The book details fear, bureaucracy and abuse inside a GEO-run facility, with updates on women Burke met.
You will remember the story from last year; Bleeding Cool went big on it, and I’m told it was partially influential in a certain disgraced U.S. ambassador getting involved. I wonder if any of that will make it into the book. In February 2025, Welsh cartoonist R.E. Burke, the unassuming Becky to her friends, was on a backpacking trip through the Pacific Northwest when a technicality at the US/Canada border led to hours of interrogation and 19 days of detention in a for-profit I.C.E. facility run by the GEO Group in Tacoma, Washington. I initially reported on the story while she was still inside, and I managed to get a few political news sites to pick it up. I followed the campaign mounted by her family, the international attention, the eventual release, the shackling on the way to the plane, and the subsequent ten-year ban from the United States. The coverage became the most-read story on the site that year, and it changed the way many British creators thought about travelling to American conventions. I reported how she was beginning to turn that experience into comics, her first shows talking about it, and her first print publication as Diary of a Detainee. As well as breaking the news that Fantagraphics, an American publisher, would pick up the graphic memoir based not solely on her experience, but telling the stories of the other women she shared detention with, who had less access to politically minded ambassadors rushing to escape an impending scandal.
Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility
Diary Of A Detainee preview by R. E. Burke
Now Fantagraphics has formally announced the publication, the schedules, the details and the date. Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility will be published in May 2027 as a full-colour paperback graphic novel at $29.99, with a digital edition to follow. The book is both a personal memoir and an act of journalism as R.E. Burke documents her own fear, despair and disorientation while also recording the lives of the ordinary women she was incarcerated with, mothers, daughters, workers, people fleeing war, genocide and abuse, and their attempts to survive a system described in the press release as “a cruel, horrifying, and rapidly worsening” one. Gary Groth of Fantagraphics says, “This is a book that has moral imperative written all over it: Becky had to write and draw it, and I couldn’t be happier that she chose us to publish it.”
“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’ attempt to help her acclimate. Burke documents in comics 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 place safe 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.”
Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility
Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility
Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility
Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility
Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility
Visiting America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility by R.E. Burke is published on the 11th of May, 2027, by Fantagraphics.
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