Deborah Bogle at The Advertiser reports that Australian children's book author Mem Fox was "detained for two hours and aggressively interrogated by immigration officials at Los Angeles airport."

En route to Milwaukee for a conference on February 9, where she was to deliver the opening keynote address at a literacy conference, Fox was ushered into an airport holding room and told she was travelling on the wrong visa. This was incorrect and the US Embassy in Canberra has since apologised. Fox, 70, said that by the time she checked in to her hotel she was shaking and sobbing.

“I am old and white, innocent and educated, and I speak English fluently,” she said. “Imagine what happened to the others in the room, including an old Iranian woman in her 80s, in a wheelchair."

Bogle notes that Fox has visited the US over a hundred times, but now the author says she will probably never travel here again.