Canadian detained for 11 days from American immigration speaks for the others stuck in limbo
Jasmine Mooney’s smile became viral after the 35 -year -old Canadian was taken in custody in the United States on the Mexican border in March, but its story is now whispered by fear.
On March 3, Mooney tried to renew the work visa, entering an immigration office on the border with Diego del Mexico-San against the advice of an American lawyer. Instead, in the end he was denied, and then suddenly, detained.
Mooney spent 11 days in custody – outside and away in the concrete cells, says they are nicknamed “ice boxes” – with just over a thin emergency blanket covered. Mooney claims to have faced numerous transfers, humiliating medical tests, degrading care and no response, despite the reasons to let her pay for her return flight.
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At the beginning he refused the food and could not sleep, but then he forced himself to get up and help others.
“I break you. That place breaks you in one million pieces. What happens in there is so disgusting,” Mooney said to CBC News in an interview on Thursday.
His case is part of a series of cases involving non -US travelers who have interested legal travelers and legal experts.
The Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney tells the CBC News of her 11 -day ordeal in the detention of the ice after trying to enter the United States to renew her work visa. Mooney describes what he saw as “disgusting”, saying about his detention cell: “That place breaks you”.
Mooney’s story has become a sort of warning, an omen of a changing attitude towards the Canadians who travel or try to work in the United States
Immigration lawyers urge people who need visas renewals to opt to go to the airports, where they can be processed on Canadian soil, without any risk of stopping if they are considered not eligible.
‘Chilling effect’
Ken Saunders, Mooney’s immigration lawyer, based in Wash.
“He has a huge chilling effect on the Canadians who go to the United States,” Saunders said.
He advised her not to try to reapply his visa in a Mexican entrance point, given changes that he saw under the new Trump administration.
“He wasn’t trying to do something illegal. He thought he was doing the right thing,” Saunders said.
“I have never seen a Canadian citizen who applied for a work visa, nor a new one or a renewal, to be held in this way.”
Mooney was at some point held in a prison in the San Diego area where a Chinese prisoner offered his time to allow Mooney to get his appeal to at least one journalist. At that point, he had no idea that his story had become viral and so many people were fighting for his freedom. It was released in a few days and left the “lucky” feeling.
Mooney says he has left a lot of women behind him when he has been released and wants to shed light in the centers of detention of immigration and customs (Ice) and how people end up being trapped there.
“I met a girl who had been eight months there,” he said.
He says that women helped her go out – and urged her to tell their stories. Mooney says that there were about 140 women in his unit at the Otay Mesa detention center, one of the first places in which it took place, in the hills of Ysidro Mountains of Otay Mesa overlooking the US border. It describes how most of the women they met had lived illegally in the United States and overcome visas – detained without notice when they reapplied.
“Meet all the girls who had walked from India, Iran, Africa, are covered by head to toe with insects and scars from their journey and paid everything this money, gave up everything they possessed to come to America and then end up in prison and most likely they are shipped to their countries,” said Mooney.
“Scorqued Earth” approach to immigration
Mooney, who grew up in Yukon and had lived in BC until last year, is one of a series of recent cases of possession of the US immigration that have attracted attention to international level.
In January, German tattoo artist Jessica Brösche It has been held for more than a month after the border agents have assumed that it would work illegally. A The 28 -year -old British backpacker was held for 10 days After trying to enter the state of Washington from Canada. He lived with host families who traded household chores for the board of directors of a tourist visa. A couple returning from Tijuana ended handcuffed: The American citizen Lennon Tyler was chained on the bench, his German boyfriend Lucas Sielaff held for 16 days for violating his 90 -day tourist permit.
NPR reported the story of a Guatemaltec immigrant named Sarahi who Accidentally he led the wrong road through the ambassador’s bridge trying to go to Costco – And in the end it was held for five days in an officeless office near the bridge with its daughters, two US citizens aged between one and five.
“I don’t think the Americans are targeting the Canadians. I think they are targeting anyone who immigrants or visits the United States. There is this intense examination,” Saunders said. “It is almost a burnt land, whether you enter and require a work visa or enter as a visitor.”
He is making his debut anyone who reapplies the visas to do it in an airport – where they are safe on Canadian soil and cannot be detained.
However, he says he is not shocked by the fact that some Canadians are just opting to jump any trip to the United States
Problems with work visa
Mooney hit the first problem of immigration last spring. He had applied for his work visa to Blaine, Wash., Frontier Office and had been denied to him. The officer noticed the missing paper of the missing employer. He tried again on the border with San Diego in April 2024. The visa was issued no problem, so he returned to California and worked. He says he no longer had problems – despite several border crossings – until he returned to the United States after a family visit in November.
Upon returning, he says that a border agent said his visa had been elaborated improperly. It was questioned and that work visa was revoked, after the borders officials noticed that its product contained hemp.
After a few months in Canada, another job was offered to her and says that she was told by another lawyer who was acceptable to try to reapply.
“The worst I thought would happen is that I would deny myself,” he said.
He went to the San Diego immigration office who developed the visa for the first time on March 3. After hours explaining his situation, he says that the officer told her that he should have reapplied a consulate. So Mooney says that the female officer added: “You didn’t do anything wrong, you’re not in trouble, you are not a criminal”.
She was told they should have sent her back to Canada. But while Mooney sat in search of flights at home on his phone, he says that a man appeared and told her to come with him.
He knew that something was far away when they pulled the laces of shoes from his sneakers.
“Later I discovered that this is how you don’t get involved in prison,” said Mooney.
CBC News contacted US officials for more details on his case. A declaration by Sandra Grisolia of Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the United States explained that Mooney was developed in accordance with the executive order to “guarantee our borders” dated January 21. It is stated that all aliens in violation of the United States immigration law can be subject to arrests, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, due to nationality.
Saunders says that Mooney planned to appeal to her revoked visa and adores the United States who was pursuing a marketing career there by selling an infusion product of hemp-dope to have managed bars and restaurants in Vancouver.
