Featured Image Credit: CTV News
Topics: Canada, Politics, Celebrity, Travel, US News, World News, Donald Trump
Liv Bridge
Topics: Canada, Politics, Celebrity, Travel, US News, World News, Donald Trump
An actress has spoken out about her traumatic ordeal when she was detained by ICE and 'wrapped in chains' when simply applying for a visa.
Jasmine Mooney, known for her role in the US cult classic movie, American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, in 2009, said she was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the US-Mexico border, despite not being charged with a crime.
The 35-year-old Canadian actress said immigration officials detained her for 12 days at the southern border of San Ysidro, between Mexico and San Diego, where she was transported three times, felt like she had been 'kidnapped' and struggled to sleep - all because she had tried to apply for a new visa on March 3.
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Jasmine finally touched down on home soil in Vancouver just after midnight on Saturday (March 15), and has now spoken out about the extent of her traumatic ordeal that she 'never in a million years' thought would happen.
Speaking to CTV News at the airport, she said: "I’m still, to be honest, really processing everything.
“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."
Jasmine said she's still kept in the dark about why she was put behind bars in the first place, even after being transported from Arizona to San Diego and then on to her homeward bound flight.
“No one told me anything. Not once,” she said. “I still don’t even know how I’m home.
"My friends and my family and the media are the reason, I think, that I’m home.”
She added: “I do not wish it upon anyone. No one deserves to go through what I witnessed.”
Jasmine previously revealed she learned in November last year that her three-year TN work visa has been revoked as she was attempting to fly from Vancouver to Los Angeles.
She travelled to the border crossing based on legal advice to obtain another visa at San Ysidro with her visa paperwork and new job offer in hand.
Speaking from the San Luis Regional Detention Center in Arizona, she told KGTV at the time that immigration officials in the center were confused at her being kept there.
"Every single guard that sees me is like ‘What are you doing here? I don’t understand — you’re Canadian. How are you here?’"
She also criticized the conditions she was kept in, adding: “I have never in my life seen anything so inhumane.”
“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."
She also claimed she was 'wrapped in chains' and up for 24 hours alongside 30 other women during her deportation to Arizona.
Jasmine, co-founder of the health-focused drink brand Holy! Water, told reporters she had 'no idea' if President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration policies are behind her detention.
"I don’t want to point fingers at anything," she said. "I really don’t know. But, obviously, people can speculate what they want.”
Jasmine also said she met other women who were held for significantly longer periods of time in the detention facilities.
"When I got to know everyone else in there, and heard all of their stories and how long they were in there, I was like, ‘OK, I’m not allowed to feel sorry for myself at all, because every single person in here is in a way worse situation than me,’” Jasmine said.
She is now warning fellow Canadians not to fall victim to the same mistake.