I was held at customs for being too pretty – they thought I looked like an escort
AN AUSTRALIAN influencer claims she was detained at a US airport for ‘looking like an escort.’
Content creator Mikaela Testa, known online as @mikaelatesta, regularly shares lifestyle content with her 2.2 million followers.
In one of her latest videos, the 22-year-old vlogger claimed she and her friend were detained for five hours at Los Angeles International Airport because US Customs officers thought they were prostitutes or escorts.
The 2-minute and 30-second reel sees Mikaela and her friend telling fans their side of the story.
“Okay, so we got to the LAX airport. I made sure I looked really really ratchet and bad because I know that the US Customs are really strict.
“Trinity, with her beautiful eyelash extensions and big, fat juicy lips, pulls up looking hot to the US Customs and I knew. I knew but I didn’t say anything.
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“The US Customs guy goes, ‘is this your first time in LA?’
“She’s like, ‘yeah.’ ‘Do you have a return flight?’ ‘No.’
“So he basically sent her straight to the detained area because…I know for a fact that he thought she was a prostitute or an escort looking to work in the US because they love detaining Australian girls and accusing them of that until they tell the truth.
“I have so many Australian girlfriends that have spent days in that detained room, being told that they are escorts and to just ‘tell the truth.’
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“And they don’t even get sent home anyway, but I know so many girls that have been sent home.
“Luckily we didn’t get sent home. We thought we were going to get sent home.
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“And there were heaps of Australian girls in there at the same time, so maybe it was the fact that we were Australian. I don’t know.
“This guy was like staring at us, like death staring us the whole time and we’re like, if we look, he’d be like, ‘look away, look at the TV, don’t look at me, only look at me if you’re being spoken to.’
“They go through your entire camera roll, all of your messages, and they make a decision whether they’re going o send your arse home or not.
“And we saw a bunch of officers laughing. We had like two other girls that knew me from Australia and they were strippers and they were going through their phones and there were just a bunch of explicit photos.
“And they were just cracking up. So unprofessional. They were literally all laughing, looking at these girls’ phones.
“I was terrified if they’d have touched my phone. Luckily they did not.
“And you’re not allowed to touch your phone at all. If you get caught touching your phone, you’re basically dead. Good luck, they’ll send you to jail.
“So you’re in this room for five hours straight, maybe more, maybe less. Who knows?
“We were in there for like five hours. They make you just watch this TV that had really bad American advertisements, and I was just watching all these ads, and I’m just starving because there’s no food and American TV is just food.
“And we met so many strippers, we met so many girls in this detained room. They’re like, ‘what are you in here for?’ And we’re like, ‘I don’t know.’
“Yeah, so that’s why we got detained in LA, and then they finally let us out at the end. We were literally the last people out of the detained room because the guys just wanted to keep us around for longer.
“I think they wanted to keep us around for longer.”
TikTok fans loved the storytime video, with it gaining more than 63,000 and 475,000 views in six hours.
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In the comments, Miikaela’s followers couldn’t believe how the girls had claimed to have been treated, with one writing: “They can go through your camera roll??? That seems illegal.”
Another claimed to have had a similar experience: “LAX customs are the worst every time they tell me I’m too young and too pretty to be travelling alone and ask how I paid for these flights by myself.”