No good can come of being in the back room at JFK airport

Is there much that is more ominous than being told you need to go to the ‘back room’ at a US airport? Well that’s what happened to me as I returned to New York, writes Holly Baxter

I was vaguely aware someone at the luggage rack had probably made off with my suitcase by now and was trying on my wedding veil (Getty)

If there’s one thing you don’t want to hear from US immigration, it’s “we need to take you to the back room”. The back room is never a place you want to go. It is not a place where people with green cards or US citizenship go; it is not a place where they serve drinks and congratulate you on making it through the eight-hour flight without yelling at that kid who kicked the back of your seat like a metronome with every passing minute. No good can come of being in the back room. So when the seemingly pleasant man looking at my visa at JFK airport a couple of days ago said that to me, my heart sank.

I can’t tell you why I was carted off to the room for people with naughty visas at midnight because they won’t tell you why you’re there either. You sit down next to an assortment of frazzled ne’er-do-wells who peer at you over their masks, behind a large sign telling you that you are ABSOLUTELY NOT ALLOWED TO USE YOUR CELLPHONE AT ANY POINT. You stare at your feet and try to remember what you did before scrolling idly through your phone was a thing. Eventually, you realise you have a book and start to read it.

Were my compatriots drug mules, refugees, cases of mistaken identity, randomly selected unfortunates? Nobody knows, of course, but everybody wants to. A middle-aged man in an N95 mask who had been on my flight locked eyes with me, gave me a look that said “I bet you got us into this by smuggling illicit dairy products in your suitcase”, and then turned away. A woman in a pink tracksuit beside me clicked her nails against her handbag and sighed. A British couple my age were told they shouldn’t have travelled in the first place and were turned back, while the man indignantly shouted that they’d lived in New York for five years and had had to travel to London for a family emergency. No dice while Biden keeps the border closed to almost everyone, of course.

While immigration officials laughed and joked with each other, I tried to keep down the over-baked mushroom pasta I ate an hour before landing and concentrate on a book about how people with tragic childhoods become geniuses. It was hot. When I read a particular passage about a young boy who struggled through brutal winters in Romania, I felt vaguely jealous.

The hours dragged by. I was vaguely aware someone at the luggage rack had probably made off with my suitcase by now and was trying on my wedding veil, as I moved on to a chapter about a man who found the cure for leukaemia. I pondered that it would probably be a lot easier getting through US immigration if one answered the question “What is the purpose of your trip?” with “I recently developed a cure for childhood cancer and am now implementing it across New York hospitals”, rather than “I sell my writing for a living, and I specialise in self-indulgent navel-gazing – so as you can imagine, my presence in your country is most certainly in the national interest”.

Then, two hours later, my name was called. I approached the bulletproof glass partition ready for the third degree but was instead simply handed a laminated piece of luminous pink paper with a scramble of incomprehensible numbers and letters on it. “You’re free to go,” said the man behind the glass, handing me my passport. “Give this to the guard outside.” I knew better than to ask questions. “Yes, sir,” I said and scuttled out of the back room as fast as I could, throwing my laminated piece of paper at the man outside as I made a beeline for the luggage carousels.

Twenty minutes later, having found my suitcase wedged under an abandoned carousel, I climbed into a yellow cab and thanked my lucky stars I was back in New York City. Was it the packet of crumpets and Penguins I’d brought in my case that made me a target for USCIS? Was it my unusual visa? Was it the knackered way I eyed the immigration official, destroyed physically from a night of flying “economy basic” and emotionally from choosing to watch the (beautiful but devastating) film Minari as I did? I’m happy not questioning things now I’m out of the back room. But I do wonder what happened to the woman in the pink tracksuit beside me whose name never seemed to be called.