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A Canadian entrepreneur and actor in the American Pie movie franchise said she was detained for almost two weeks in “inhumane” conditions by US border authorities over an incomplete visa.
Jasmine Mooney, an actor who is also co-founder of the beverage brand Holy! Water, was detained on 3 March in San Diego, California.
The 35-year-old Canadian citizen’s work visa to the US was reportedly revoked back in November while traveling from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and she was attempting to file a new application.
“Every single guard that sees me is like, ‘What are you doing here? I don’t understand. You’re Canadian. How are you here?’” Mooney said in an interview with ABC 10 last week from the Arizona immigration detention center where she was being held.
Her mother, Alexis Eagles, who lives in British Columbia, says Mooney was detained at the San Ysidro border crossing between Mexico and San Diego, the busiest land border crossing in the world, on 3 March with an incomplete application for a work visa. Eagles told the Vancouver Sun that instead of sending her daughter to Canada or advising her to fix her application, US Customs and Border Protection officers arrested her.
Mooney had not been charged with any crime and does not have a prior criminal record.
She spent three nights in the detention centre, then was transferred. “We eventually learned that about 30 people, including Jasmine, were removed from their cells at 3am and transferred to the San Luis detention center in Arizona,” Eagles said.
“They are housed together in a single concrete cell with no natural light, fluorescent lights that are never turned off, no mats, no blankets, and limited bathroom facilities.”
Every time Mooney was transferred, she was handcuffed and in chains, Eagles claimed.
Mooney told ABC 10 that she was appalled by the conditions inside the private detention facility in San Luis where she was being kept.
“I have never in my life seen anything so inhumane,” she said. “I was put in a cell, and I had to sleep on a mat with no blanket, no pillow, with an aluminum foil wrapped over my body like a dead body for two and a half days.”
Mooney was profiled in BC Business magazine in 2019 for her work in the hospitality industry. According to the profile, she moved from the Yukon to Vancouver in 2008 to study at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. From there, she went to acting school, before owning and operating a bar.
She has said she had a three-year US work visa, which her mother said was revoked as she attempted to travel back to Los Angeles, where she was living, after a holiday in Canada. It was unclear why Mooney’s earlier visa was revoked, or why she was at the southern border this month. However, she told ABC she got her first visa at the San Ysidro border crossing on the advice of a Los Angeles attorney, who met her at the border, and therefore may have thought it would work a second time at that location.
The Guardian contacted US Customs and Border Protection for comment.
Mooney was released over the weekend and landed at Vancouver international airport shortly after midnight on Saturday morning.
“I’m still, to be honest, really processing everything,” Mooney told reporters who were waiting for her at the airport’s international arrivals area.
“I haven’t slept in a while and haven’t eaten proper food in a while, so I’m just really going through the motions,” she told CTV News.
“Thank you for all your messages of support. I’m sorry if I haven’t been able to respond to everyone – just got home after what felt like escaping a deeply disturbing psychological experiment,” she added in a post on her Instagram account.
