Canadian Actress Recounts Her Terrifying Experience in ICE Custody

The Canadian actress who was shackled and detained for 12 days earlier this month by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is speaking out about her traumatizing experience.

“It felt like we had all been kidnapped, thrown into some sort of sick psychological experiment meant to strip us of every ounce of strength and dignity,” she wrote in a new Medium article called “You’re Not a Criminal, But You’re Going to Jail: My ICE Detention Story as a Canadian Citizen.”

Jasmine Mooney, who had a role in the spinoff “American Pie Presents: The Book of Love,” said she had traveled back and forth between Canada and the U.S. with her visa multiple times without any complications.

“I love America, and I genuinely wanted to be part of helping make the country a healthier place,” she wrote in a new post on Medium this week.

She had been offered a marketing job with an American wellness company earlier this year, and wanted to travel to the U.S. to join her colleagues.

But one day, as she was attempting to enter the U.S., a border officer stationed at the Vancouver Airport started questioning her. He said there were a few issues with her paperwork and she would need to reapply for a visa.

What seemed like a simple misunderstanding would soon blow up into something much bigger.

ICE Detains Canadian Woman and ‘Wraps Her in Chains’ SHACKLED

Kenneal Patterson

Mooney stayed in Canada for the next few months before eventually trying to reapply for her work visa where her first visa was processed—an office at the San Ysidro, California, border crossing with Mexico.

It didn’t work. She was rejected with little information and told she’d be sent back to Canada.

“That didn’t concern me—I assumed I would simply book a flight home,” she said. But as she sat and searched for flights, an officer approached her and took her away.

She was being detained. It was the start of a 12-day ordeal that Mooney said tested her resolve.

“There was no explanation, no warning,” she wrote. “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.”

After they searched her bag and interrogated her, they handed her a mat and a “folded up sheet of aluminum foil.”

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Your blanket,” the officer responded.

Mooney said she was taken to a “tiny, freezing cement cell” with fluorescent lights. Five other women were lying on their mats with the foil “wrapped over them like dead bodies.”

“We never knew what time it was, and no one answered our questions,” she said. “No one in the cell spoke English, so I either tried to sleep or meditate to keep from having a breakdown. I didn’t trust the food, so I fasted, assuming I wouldn’t be there long.”

She was wrong. She was then sent to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, was she was given a jail uniform and fingerprinted.

She was desperate for information, and asked the officers how long she would be there.

“I don’t know your case,” said one man. “Could be days. Could be weeks. But I’m telling you right now—you need to mentally prepare yourself for months.”

Life seemed bleak, but Mooney found strength in the other women around her. There were 140 others in her unit. None of them had a criminal record. For many, their only offense was that they had overstayed their visas—often after attempting to reapply. Many had been in the U.S. for over a decade, paying their taxes and waiting for their green cards. Others were students getting their master’s degree.

They were all detained without warning.

“Women were picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes—one woman’s daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release.”

Mooney formed bonds with the women—connecting through stories and prayer circles. But one night, at 3 a.m., she was suddenly transferred to another facility in Arizona.

“For many of these women, detention centers had become a twisted version of home,” she wrote. “Now, without warning, they were being torn apart and sent somewhere new. Watching them say goodbye —clinging to each other was gut-wrenching."

She was crammed with nearly 50 others in a prison bus, bound in chains that wrapped tightly around her waist. Her cuffed hands were secured to her body and her feet were restrained in shackles for five hours.

Arizona’s San Luis Regional Detention Center was even worse than the first facility. “If the first jail’s meals looked expired, this food looked like it had been forgotten in a storage closet for decades,” she said. She got sick after eating.

“Everything in this place felt like it was meant to break you,” she wrote. She was given men’s shoes and only a hand towel to dry off after showers. She shared a room with dozens of others. She was not allowed to make phone calls.

“We were locked in this room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out,” she wrote.

Her only comfort came from the women around her. Even though they all different languages and were from different countries, “everyone took care of each other.”

Mooney said that detention is a business, and facilities receive government funding—hundreds of millions of dollars—based on the number of people they detain.

“They don’t lobby for stricter immigration policies in the name of national security—they do it to protect their bottom line," she said, naming two companies in particular: CoreCivic and GEO Group.

CoreCivic’s spokesperson Brian Todd refuted Mooney’s claims and told the Daily Beast that the company does not “draft, lobby for, promote or in any way take a position on proposals, policies or legislation that determine the basis or duration of an individual’s detention.”

Todd also defended CoreCivic’s “limited” role in America’s immigration system.

“We know this is a highly charged, emotional issue for many people, but the fact is our sole job is to help the government solve problems in ways it could not do alone – to help manage unprecedented humanitarian crises, dramatically improve the standard of care for vulnerable people, and meet other critical needs efficiently and innovatively,” he added.

Mooney was released after two weeks, and after she found a way to contact lawyers and the media. She said she plans to advocate for people that don’t have her privilege: “At our core, we are the same — human beings searching for connection, dignity, and hope.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to ICE for comment.