Updated April 02, 2025 at 12:26 PM ET
For most of her life, 35-year-old Jasmine Mooney has crossed back and forth between her native Canada and the United States, including working in California, until last year, when her U.S. visa was revoked.
Then she got a new job in the U.S. So last month, Mooney, a Canadian actress and co-founder of the tonic health beverage brand, Holy! Water, went to the San Ysidro port of entry at the border of Mexico and California with her paperwork to apply for a TN visa. This type of visa allows Canadian and Mexican professionals to stay temporarily in the United States.
Mooney said she used the San Ysidro center because she had previously been granted a visa there.
What happened next is something she never could have imagined.
"They took me, they took all of my luggage. They took my phone, my hands against the wall," she told NPR.
Mooney doesn't have a criminal record and assumed, based on a lawyer's advice, that if there was an issue, she'd be allowed to go back to Mexico and then home to Canada. Instead, she was detained for 12 days. When she was released, she wrote about her experience for The Guardian.
Her situation mirrors that of many others who have recently faced abrupt arrests and detentions in a rapidly shifting immigration system under the Trump administration. She credits media coverage of her detention, politicians advocating for her, and her legal team for getting her out; tools few other detainees have.
When NPR asked about her detention, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham said in a statement that the agency cannot disclose details about specific cases. A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said Mooney "was detained for not having legal documentation to be in the U.S.," adding that she "was processed in accordance with the 'Securing Our Borders' Executive Order dated January 21. All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the U.S., regardless of nationality."
Her ordeal started with 48 hours in a holding cell.
"They handed me this little mat and this aluminum foil thing that you use as a blanket. You wrap it around yourself like a dead body, because it's so cold in the cells, and you just lay there. I laid on the cement floor for two days, and no one told me what was going on," she said.
On the third day, she was allowed her first phone call.
"I called my best friend. Thank god I remembered her phone number. And so I was like, you need to call my lawyers. You need to call my family. You need to get a hold of anyone, any of our friends, that can help me in this situation."
Then she was transferred to the Otay Mesa detention center, a facility operated by ICE in San Diego.
"I am in an office talking to this officer. She has a bunch of paperwork, and they said I was being banned for five years. I have the chance to appeal, but I'm, as of now, banned. And then that's when I got transferred to the jail in San Diego."
She described being dressed in a prison uniform and placed in prison with about 150 other women.
"Every single woman in my unit, none of us had a criminal record. A lot of them had working visas, and then they reapplied and were denied or their visas expired. Everyone had a different story."
While friends, family and colleagues went to the media to tell her story, Mooney was transferred again to an ICE detention center in Arizona, where she says she was held with 30 other women in a cell.
"Everyone in there was my cheerleader, trying to get me out. They were like, you're the only one that we believe can use your voice to help us and everyone in here."
She said many of the women she met had fled persecution in their home countries.
"They were from all over the world. They had spoken out against their countries. They had come from Iran, India, Africa, and they're like, no one's gonna listen to us, but we feel like people are gonna listen to you."
The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Leila Fadel: So before you got detained, had you ever thought about these detention facilities and this immigration system? And what were you thinking when you got there?
Jasmine Mooney: I knew nothing. It's something I never thought about before. You hear some stories, like crossing the border illegally, physically sneaking in, but never firsthand, when you're in it and seeing how they treat these people, again, who have no criminal record. And then the biggest thing for me is like, okay, if you don't want us, if you don't want us in your country, if we're all getting deported, why are you keeping us in here for this long? Why is it that me, as a Canadian citizen with a Canadian passport, offered to pay for her flight home, yet I was still here for two weeks?
Fadel: What were some of the stories from women you met while you were in Arizona?
Mooney: I became really close with someone from India and another woman from Iran, and they had very similar stories. They saw something that was not right in their countries, and they used their voices, and they got in a lot of trouble. So they both sold everything they owned, and they're, like, spending like $60,000 to try to get to the U.S.
Fadel: You were told at one point that you should prepare to be detained for months or longer. Ultimately you were detained for 12 days. What do you think got you out sooner?
Mooney: I had the media. I had politicians advocating for me. I had lawyers. I had everything that I could possibly get. So you can only imagine what all these other people have, which is nothing. They do not have my privilege.
Fadel: Now, you came out with letters from other women in detention. Why did they give them to you, and what did you do with them?
Mooney: When we first got in there, we weren't given access. This was in Arizona, and they were just scared. They were so scared; they didn't know what was going on. And they were like, you for sure are getting out of here before any of us. So if we still haven't been able to get ahold of our families, please give them this message, essentially.
Fadel: So it feels like you came out with a mission?
Mooney: I've never written anything before, and when I got out, I wrote my essay flying home on the plane. I was like, I need to share this. I need to tell people that this is happening. I don't know what it will do, maybe no one will even listen, but I need to try. This isn't just my story. This is happening very regularly now.
This story was adapted and edited for the web by Majd Al-Waheidi.
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