Thursday night, New Orleans. I have flown in from Los Angeles for work and am walking off the jet bridge, thinking about dinner, when 15 men in vests coalesce around me. I have never been arrested before. Even they find it strange, because I am British, and I am in Balenciaga, and I am ever so nice about it all.

They take my belt, wallet, every piece of identification, my rosary and Missal, cash. They put me in chains. Real chains. Every man they arrest, whatever he has done, ends up garlanded in steel like this: wincing, hopping, clattering. It hurts more than they make out on TV. 

I mean to stare into his lens with defiance and stoicism, but I am fat and covered in filth and stains and drool

I mean to stare into his lens with defiance and stoicism, but I am fat and covered in filth and stains and drool

Yes. I am being deported.

Somewhere in Miami, at hearings nobody told me about, a judge has ordered me removed. My work permit has been cancelled without a word. The notices were sent to a Florida address I left ten years ago, which, I realise, must have been on purpose. The same agencies have been writing regularly and without incident to my new address for years. 

Three of the five warning letters were even returned, marked ‘addressee unknown’. The arresting agents told me so. When I said I could not find my lawyer’s number, an agent read it to me off his........

© The Spectator