XPost: alt.politics.immigration, can.politics, sac.politics
XPost: talk.politics.guns

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.

Mooney told the Guardian that she had been traveling back and forth for
work several times between Canada and California without issues. It wasn’t until during one trip returning to the US that she was suddenly questioned
by a border patrol agent and subsequently detained.

According to Mooney, she was told that her visa hadn’t been “properly processed” during a lengthy interrogation. An officer also claimed that
she couldn’t work for a company in the US that made use of hemp, one of
these ingredients used in her Holy! Water health tonic brand.

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 center, 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.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/canadian-actor-jasmine- mooney-detained-mexico-border

Boo hoo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)