Canadian Recounts Border Ordeal: I Felt 'Kidnapped'

Amid all the friction between the US and Canada at the moment, 35-year-old Jasmine Mooney has inadvertently become a very public face of it. Mooney, a Canadian national, was detained for 12 days by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over an issue with her visa application, reports the New York Times. She's now back home in Vancouver, BC, but her plight has made international headlines. And Mooney herself has written a lengthy first-person account in the Guardian.

• Mooney is more of an entrepreneur now, per ABC 10 in San Diego, but as an actor she appeared in American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, a direct-to-video spinoff of the movie series.
• Last month, Mooney applied for what's known as a TN visa at the border in San Ysidro, California, hoping to enter the US after being offered a marketing job at a wellness startup. She was told she needed to apply at a different location—a consulate—but instead of being allowed to return home to try again, she was taken into custody. "They say, 'Hands on the wall,'" she tells the Times. (The newspaper details the visa ups and downs of Mooney, who had previously worked for years in the San Diego area.)

• "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 writes in the Guardian. In the essay and in interviews, Mooney recounts being transferred to various facilities in the Southwest—and having to pee in Dixie cups along with other detainees—before finally being allowed to go back to Canada.
• Mooney in her essay suggests the detention only makes sense as part of what she describes as a moneymaking racket. "The reality became clear: ICE detention isn't just a bureaucratic nightmare. It's a business," she writes. "These facilities are privately owned and run for profit." (Read it in full here.)