Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Weekend feature: American homeland security: "Deport? Me? 'Why?' I asked, incredulously.

'You came here as a journalist, and you don't have a journalist's visa.' I had never heard of it. He swiftly produced the visa waiver (I-94W) I had signed on the plane, and pointed to what it said in tiny print: in addition to not being a drug smuggler, a Nazi or any other sort of criminal, I had inadvertently declared that I was not entering the US as a representative of foreign media."