PORTLAND — She arrived at Portland International Airport on a warm summer evening, dreaming of craft beer, long hikes and the good company she was about to enjoy in the Pacific Northwest.
Instead, Cristina Alonso, a 22-year-old student from Spain, was detained by federal customs agents, placed in handcuffs and eventually jailed 90 miles outside of the city.
Nearly 20 hours would pass before an American friend could contact Alonso inside the Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility in The Dalles, where the young woman had already sobbed for hours and suffered panic attacks.
“It was hell,” Alonso said during a recent Google video chat interview from Spain. “They treated me like a criminal when I hadn’t committed a crime.”
The disturbing chain of events all stemmed from a minor mix-up on her travel documents, one that even federal officials acknowledge as “probably an honest mistake.” From there, bad luck, bureaucracy and miscommunication kept her detained for roughly 48 hours before officials placed her on a flight back home.
The July incident spurred national headlines in Spain decrying Alonso’s treatment and a local backlash after the ACLU of Oregon published an account last week.
“She was caught in this net designed to prevent another 9/11,” said Jaime Ruiz, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “It’s a massive operation to keep everyone safe.”
Mat dos Santos, legal director of the ACLU of Oregon, offered a different perspective.
“There are horror and thriller movies made with a plot like this,” he said. “Only they don’t take place in a country like the U.S.”
Alonso had planned to visit Oregon for several weeks during the summer, staying with a family she knew who lived in Corvallis.
Laurie Bridges, a librarian at Oregon State University, said she connected with Alonso through a friend during a visit to Spain in 2016. Following that trip, she and her husband hoped to find a native Spanish-speaker to help their 8-year-old son learn the language.
Bridges and Alonso struck up a friendship over email and the messaging service WhatsApp and soon began making arrangements.
“We were all thrilled,” Bridges said. “We had everything down to the last minute and detail of Cristina’s trip.”
Alonso, an interior design student at CESINE University in northern Spain, had never traveled outside the European Union. The chance to practice English and sample more of Oregon’s celebrated local beers — some of which she’d tried back home — was too good to pass up.
“I was so excited to have all of these new experiences in a country that wasn’t my own,” she said.
