“Kidnapped” Canadian speaks out about her treatment in U.S. detention

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A Canadian woman who was detained for nearly two weeks by immigration officials in the U.S. is speaking out about her experience in an extensive account for The Guardian, titled “It felt like I hand been kidnapped.”

Jasmine Mooney, a 35-year-old business consultant from Vancouver, was detained by U.S. immigration officials while attempting to cross the border with a job offer and visa paperwork in hand.

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She spent 12 days in detention, under what her supporters described as “inhumane conditions,” with no clear explanation as to why U.S. Customs and Border Protection had arrested her. “We treat cattle better than this in Canada,” her mother, Alexis Eagles, said during her incarceration.

Mooney had been working in the U.S. but was detained at the San Ysidro U.S.-Mexico border crossing near San Diego, Calif., on March 3.

She says in her Guardian article that she’d been granted a trade NAFTA work visa, but that it had been revoked during a crossing into the U.S. because the beverage company she’d been working for used Hemp in its products.

“I was devastated,” she writes. “I had just started building a life in California. I stayed in Canada for the next few months, and was eventually offered a similar position with a different health and wellness brand.”

She restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, but was told by an immigration officer that, due to her previous issues, she needed to apply through the consulate.

“Then she said something strange: ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You are not in trouble, you are not a criminal.’ I remember thinking: Why would she say that? Of course I’m not a criminal!”

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What happened next happened fast. Mooney says she was told she would be sent back to Canada. But as she started looking for flights on her phone, a man said: “Come with me.”

“There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. A woman immediately began patting me down,” she writes, adding: “They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.”

Mooney was “taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet.” In it were five other women, none of whom spoke English. After three days, she was moved to another cell.

“That’s when I realized they were processing me into real jail: the Otay Mesa Detention Center.”

She describes the prison as “two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies,” adding: “I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet.” She had been fasting since her arrest, and continued it for her first day in the detention centre, not trusting the food or water there.

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There were about 140 women there, some of whose stories made her feel grateful she wasn’t even worse off.

“I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband,” she writes. “She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.”

A family of three had been living in the U.S. for 11 years with work authorizations. A woman from Canada had been living in the U.S. with her husband and was detained after a traffic stop, and stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she didn’t have her passport with her at the time. A girl from India had overstayed her student visa by three days before heading home, and then came back to the U.S. on a new, valid visa to finish her master’s degree, only to be arrested over her previous visa.

Mooney’s next stop was Arizona, the San Luis Regional Detention Center.

“The transfer process lasted 24 hours, a sleepless, gruelling ordeal,” she writes. “This time, men were transported with us. Roughly 50 of us were crammed into a prison bus for the next five hours, packed together – women in the front, men in the back. We were bound in chains that wrapped tightly around our waists, with our cuffed hands secured to our bodies and shackles restraining our feet, forcing every movement into a slow, clinking struggle.”

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Detainees there were fingerprinted and asked whether they had been sexually assaulted or had attempted suicide, Mooney told the New York Times. And at each new location she was given a medical check. She described taking a pregnancy test as part of that: “We had to pee in open Dixie cups in the cell, and the bathrooms are open.”

She describes the conditions there: “Thirty of us shared one room. We were given one Styrofoam cup for water and one plastic spoon that we had to reuse for every meal. I eventually had to start trying to eat and, sure enough, I got sick. None of the uniforms fit, and everyone had men’s shoes on. The towels they gave us to shower were hand towels. They wouldn’t give us more blankets. The fluorescent lights shined on us 24/7.”

But the new prison came with a shred of hope in the form of a tablet attached to the wall from which one could send emails. Mooney ended up in touch with a friend, and they decided to go to the media. It wasn’t long before news arrived that she was being released.

“My ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent, who had never spoken to me, told my lawyer I could have left sooner if I had signed a withdrawal form, and that they hadn’t known I would pay for my own flight home,” she writes, adding: “From the moment I arrived, I begged every officer I saw to let me pay for my own ticket home. Not a single one of them ever spoke to me about my case.”

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Mooney notes: “To put things into perspective: I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks. Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.”

Mooney is barred from returning to the United States for five years, but she said she plans to appeal, telling the New York Times: “I love America. I love my friends there. I love the life I was building there and the opportunities.”

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