According to a CTV News Toronto article, a Toronto man  aboard a Flair flight, said after the plane made an emergency landing, border officials stripped him of his belongings and locked him in a room overnight.

Mexican-born Luis Alabarda who lives in Toronto for his studies, was on a flight from Cancun to Canada after traveling to Cancun to assist his wife who was recovering from surgery. 

The plane — a Boeing 737 — experienced a depressurization issue, and was forced to make an emergency landing at the Fort Lauderdale airport. In an interview with CTV News, the twenty-five-year-old Albarada said that when the plane landed, passengers had to wait for an hour before being allowed to leave the aircraft where U.S. border officials were waiting to interview them.

Albarada told CTV that Flair employees told passengers they would be given a temporary visa to enter the U.S. and that all necessary expenses would be covered while they waited for a flight to Toronto.  According to Alabarda (who suffers from a heart condition), he began to feel unwell due to the stress of the situation and asked for medical assistance but was told there was no one to help him and that he should find care after being cleared by border agents.

The article goes on to say that Alabarda was shocked by what border agents told him: that he would not be allowed in the U.S. “because he had been denied a visitor visa about a year ago.” Alabarda told CTV News that he was trying to visit the U.S. last year but because he he didn’t have the proper paperwork to prove he was a student, he was rejected.

Alabarda told CTV that he was told, that “he was not allowed to come to the U.S. They said ‘You’re not under arrest, but you are detained.'” He was told that he would be detained until the airline could get him on another Flair flight which was not until the following day at 6 p.m. He was given permission to contact his mother who who booked him on an Air Canada flight the next morning.

Alabarda  was then escorted to a “special room” by border guards. “They put me in and took my things. They even took my shoes,” he told CTV. “It was a little apartment for detained people.”

He said the guards left him locked up with another person overnight. The next morning he was put in the back of a van and driven to the airport for his flight. He told CTV News that he’s now “having panic attacks at night.

In an email to CTV News Toronto, Flair said “they worked closely with Fort Lauderdale Airport and U.S. officials to ensure that all passengers were processed quickly and properly upon landing.”

Alabarda said that Flair has refunded him for the flight and offered him two round-trip tickets to anywhere they fly.

He told CTV News that moving forward he’s “gong to be scared every time he goes on a plane.”