Two British tourists were denied entry and forced to return home after joking on Twitter that they were going to “destroy America” and “dig up Marilyn Monroe.”
Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with friend Emily Bunting.
The pair tried desperately to explain to airport officials that “destroy” was slang for “partying,” and that the tweet about “diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up” was a reference to a Family Guy episode, but federal agents apparently don’t have much of a sense of humor.
“The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist,” said Van Bryan, “I kept saying they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me ‘You’ve really f***ed up with that tweet, boy’.”
The DHS has not commented.
