A structure theorem for strong immersions

A graph H is strongly immersed in G if H is obtained from G by a sequence of vertex splittings (i.e., lifting some pairs of incident edges and removing the vertex) and edge removals. Equivalently, vertices of H are mapped to distinct vertices of G (branch vertices) and edges of H are mapped to pairwise edge-disjoint paths in G, each of them joining the branch vertices corresponding to the ends of the edge and not containing any other branch vertices. We describe the structure of graphs avoiding a fixed graph as a strong immersion. The theorem roughly states that a graph which excludes a fixed graph as a strong immersion has a tree-like decomposition into pieces glued together on small edge cuts such that each piece of the decomposition has a path-like linear decomposition isolating the high degree vertices.