Colombia deports U.S. tourist who was stranded at a Bogota airport for three months

Colombian authorities have initiated deportation proceedings against a U.S. woman who has been stranded in Bogota's international airport since October, sleeping in the departure lounge and surviving on handouts from fellow tourists.

The woman, identified by Colombian reporters as 46-year-old Tanya Lewis of Louisiana, was removed from the airport in handcuffs by immigration authorities Wednesday and escorted to the U.S. Embassy in preparation for her deportation. Embassy staff members said they could not comment on the case or on Lewis’s current whereabouts, citing privacy statutes. But an embassy official acknowledged it is rare for U.S. citizens to be deported from Colombia.

It’s unclear how Lewis got stranded in Colombia, though interviews she gave to reporters in Bogota this week suggest her ordeal is not exactly a South American version of “The Terminal.”

Lewis told Colombia’s El Espectador that she left the United States in 2012 to escape “legal troubles,” but she insisted that she had done nothing wrong and that the charges against her were false. She said she had drifted through Canada and Britain before arriving in Ecuador last year. Her goal was to travel to Jordan via Spain, but she ran out of money in the southern Colombian city of Cali. A group of sympathetic travelers helped pay for her flight to Bogota on Oct. 25, she said, and she has been stranded in the terminal since then.

Lewis said she spent most of her days walking around the airport and writing in a diary, waking up at 5 a.m. every morning because the seating in the departure lounge was so uncomfortable. Her carry-on bag has been her pillow.

Before her arrest, Lewis told Bogota’s Citynoticias: “I can’t afford to eat every day, but some travelers who also speak English give me money or food. When I have enough, I go to a hotel near the airport and pay for a hot shower and laundry.” Janitorial workers and other airport staff also took pity on Lewis, helping her survive on empanadas and other snacks.

“It was tough to see her there every day and night in those chairs,” Diana Fernandez, who sells insurance in the terminal, told El Tiempo. “Every morning when I arrived at work I bought her a coffee, so she could wake up with a hot beverage.”

Lewis said she asked the airlines for a seat on a flight to Spain, but they refused to give it to her free.

U.S. Embassy staffers would not say whether Lewis had previously asked for their help, but they noted that the embassy typically provides emergency assistance to stranded U.S. travelers, including airfare for a return flight home. Immigration authorities said Lewis entered Colombia without proper authorization, which was the reason for her removal.