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Sue Smethurst thought her trip to from Australia to L.A. to interview Olivia Newton-John about breast cancer for New Idea magazine, where she is an editor, would go as smoothly as all her other visits. Wrong. She was handcuffed, marched through the airport and body searched -- then deported after 15 hours in custody -- for having the wrong visa.
"I've had every part of me groped beyond belief...(I was) shocked more than anything, disbelief, total sense of disbelief, humiliated," she told Australia's Channel Nine. Smethurst was detained under a new reading of the law that lets tourists in on a 90-day waiver of the visa rules, but not working journalists.
Smethurst told the Sydney Morning Herald that her makeup and lip liner were confiscated as national security threats and that she was made to sign various documents and oaths.