Fantagraphics To Publish Vanishing America: 19 Days In An I.C.E. Facility
A Shocking Graphic Memoir by R.E. Burke
In Stores May 2027
While on vacation in the Pacific Northwest, a 28-year-old British cartoonist was shackled and detained in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) facility for 19 days. As her family mounted a campaign to free her, R.E. Burke documented the lives of the ordinary, innocent women she found herself incarcerated with and their attempts to survive the immoral violation of their legal and human rights.
In this work of graphic memoir and journalism, British cartoonist R. E. Burke tells the story of how, in February 2025, as she was attempting to cross the border into Canada from Washington State, an innocent technicality led to hours of terrifying interrogation and unjust detainment in an I.C.E. facility (run by the for-profit GEO corporation) for 19 days.
In vivid color and startling detail, Visiting America immerses readers in her experiences: her fear, despair, disorientation, and her fellow detainees’ attempt to help her acclimate. Burke documents in comics form, the difficulty of navigating a haphazard, callous bureaucracy, rife with misinformation, stonewalling, and threats. As her mental and physical conditions worsen, despite the best efforts of the women to take care of each other, a campaign to free her mounted by friends and family garners international support.
Visiting America is not only her own story, but the stories of the strength, spirit, and humor of the other women — mothers, daughters, workers, innocent people fleeing war, genocide, and abuse — whose situations are even more precarious and desperate. They are trapped in a cruel, horrifying, and rapidly worsening system with no place safe to return to. Burke’s memoir includes an epilogue with updates about some of the women she was detained with.
Visiting America is potent evidence for the graphic memoir’s power to share our most vulnerable stories. Burke’s pages demand the reader’s attention, and her story demands a nation to take action.
From Fantagraphics publisher and Visiting America Editor Gary Groth:
“This is a book that has moral imperative written all over it: Becky had to write and draw it and I couldn't be happier that she chose us to publish it.”
Visiting America: 19 Days in an I.C.E. Facility will be available wherever books are sold as a paperback graphic novel (ISBN: 979-8-8750-0468-1) as well as a digital edition, in May 2027, for a list price of $29.99.
About the creator:
R.E. Burke is a comic absorber/creator/admirer from Wales. She studied English and Philosophy at Bristol University and earned a postgraduate degree in Publishing Media at Oxford Brookes. She has made mini comics and zines alongside various jobs and has shifted from a full-time corporate position to part-time nannying so she can dedicate more time to art. Burke now lives and draws in London.
She has been banned from visiting America for ten years.
About the publisher: For 50 years, Fantagraphics has published the very best comics and graphic novels that the medium has to offer. Our mission is to celebrate great cartooning in all of its incarnations, from the form’s early luminaries to contemporary artists currently forging the future of visual storytelling. Not content to rest on our laurels and extensive roster of talented artists, we constantly seek out fresh voices from across the globe. Thus, we honor the rich history of comics while providing a platform for bold new stories, styles, and perspectives that push the boundaries of the medium. Fantagraphics remains peerless in our commitment to be the publisher of the world’s greatest cartoonists.
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