Fox who was en route to Milwaukee to address a conference, said agents accused her of having the wrong kind of visa, even though she had traveled to the United States scores of times before without incident.

Mem Fox got a written apology from the US embassy in Canberra after lodging a complaint over her treatment by immigration officials at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this month, according to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Company. Mem Fox.

A best-selling Australian children’s book writer said she was traumatized and “sobbed like a baby’’ after being wrongfully detained and aggressively questioned by US border control officials in Los Angeles.

The 70-year-old author, best known for her books “Possum Magic,’’ “Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes,” and “Tough Boris,’’ blamed the incident on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that appeared to give agents “turbocharged power” to “humiliate and insult” those they detained to check visas. She said that she was held in a room with others, including Iranians, Taiwanese, and a Scandinavian parent with a small child, all of whom were similarly mistreated.


“I thought: ‘How can human beings treat other vulnerable human beings in this fashion, in public, in full view of everybody?’ ‘’ she told the network.

Paul S. Makishima can be reached at makishima@globe.com.