Canadian citizen Jasmine Mooney is still trying to process being back home in B.C. after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained her at the U.S. border in San Diego.
“I haven’t slept in a while and haven’t eaten proper food well, so I’m just really going through the motions,” Mooney told Global News after touching down at Vancouver’s International Airport on the weekend.
“Getting back here was, it’s just been a lot.”
Mooney, originally from Vancouver, tried to enter the U.S. from Mexico at the San Diego border last Monday.
“I was reapplying for my work visa and with no warning about what was about to happen I was taken by ICE,” Mooney told an ABC News 10 San Diego reporter last week from the detention centre where she was being held.
ICE officers enforce federal laws governing border control, customs, trade and immigration.
Mooney was applying for a TN Visa, which is a non-immigrant visa that allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the United States in specific professional occupations.
She is the founder of a water health drink brand and told ABC News 10 San Diego that ICE agents told her she was “unprofessional” because she did not have a proper letterhead.
Mooney moved to Los Angeles in summer 2024, working on her business with a three-year work visa, which she applied for successfully by entering the U.S. from Mexico. She was trying to do the same thing after her first visa was unexpectedly revoked in November 2024.
When she touched down in Vancouver on the weekend, Mooney said she would not wish her experience inside a U.S. detention centre on anyone.
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“No one deserves to go through that, what I witnessed,” Mooney said, adding that women from all over the world were there, all with different backgrounds and different stories.
B.C. woman detained in the U.S. returns home
She said no one told her anything, at any time, about what was going on.
“It’s just been a very, very confusing situation,” Mooney said. “Like, I’ve been gone for almost two weeks and I have no idea what really happened.”
She said if she had known there was the possibility of being detained, she never would have attempted to cross.
“I’m telling you from the second I got there to now, like, I can’t even process what just happened because there was no heads up,” Mooney said.
“Next thing you know, I’m taken. And for two weeks, I haven’t been told anything. Moved in different cells. Sleeping on cement, sleeping in different jail cells. Like, it’s just, nothing makes sense to me and I’m still trying to process the entire situation.”
Mooney said women in the detention centres were shocked to hear she was from Canada.
“Everyone thought I was from Russia,” she said.
Mooney said she met one young woman who had been detained for 10 months with no answers.
“Two weeks compared to 10 months,” she said. “How am I supposed to complain about anything, right?”
Family of Vancouver woman detained after entering U.S. raise alarm
Lawyer and policy analyst Richard Kurland said many people don’t realize what being detained looks like.
“Foreign nationals have no right to be in a country,” he said last week.
“It’s a privilege if they’re allowed in. And foreign nationals do not enjoy the same rights and privileges as citizens when it comes to detention. There’s no standard when it comes to foreign nationals.”
Kurland said he is not surprised to hear of the horrible conditions Mooney was in with poor bathroom facilities and lights that are on for 24 hours.
It sends a message to “would-be border jumpers” that if they are caught, it won’t be pleasant, he added.
“Don’t get it wrong at the border,” Kurland said. “Protect yourself. Always be nice and polite with a border officer before they cut you loose and put you in cargo in some immigration detention centre.”
Kurland said during Trump’s first administration, immigration issues were used to further free trade negotiations and the same thing is happening now.
“Don’t argue, don’t argue, don’t argue,” he said. “If an American officer says something, that’s it. If you raise your voice, if you don’t answer directly and truthfully, you risk detention. And as people know who’ve been there, if you’re a passenger, you’re in cargo after that — in some immigration detention centre that treats you as cargo and worse.”
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