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Topics: Film and TV, US News, Canada, Crime, Los Angeles, Mexico
Gerrard Kaonga
Topics: Film and TV, US News, Canada, Crime, Los Angeles, Mexico
A former American Pie actress has spoken of her grueling experience after being detained by ICE while she was in the process of applying for her visa.
Canadian actress and entrepreneur Jasmine Mooney, who featured in the American Pie Presents: The Book of Love film back in 2009, has spoken out at being detained despite not being charged with commiting a crime.
She said she was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the southern border while trying to obtain a new visa.
She was picked up at the San Ysidro border between Mexico and San Diego on March 3. She had traveled to the border crossing earlier this month after learning in November last year that her three-year TN work visa had been revoked as she was trying to catch a flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles.
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From advice from her lawyer she tried to get another visa at San Ysidro, where she had obtained her first work visa, with a new job offer and her visa paperwork in hand.
Speaking to KGTV, Mooney said she entered the country through Mexico, where border agents initially advised her to visit a US Consulate to apply for legal status to work in the country again. She was then refused re-entry to Mexico and detained.
Speaking to the outlet from inside the San Luis Regional Detention Center in Arizona, she said: “Every single guard that sees me is like ‘What are you doing here? I don’t understand — you’re Canadian. How are you here?’
“I have never in my life seen anything so inhumane.”
As well as this, Mooney said the conditions at which she was kept were far from ideal.
She added: “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 complained the quality of food she has been given since being detained, however a spokesperson for the private company has denounced her comments.
Spokesperson for the private company that owns the detention center, Brian Todd, said the facility provides ‘nutritious’ meals daily to inmates.
She also said she was shipped, alongside 30 other women, in the middle of the night to Arizona.
She added: “We were up for 24 hours wrapped in chains.”
However, Mooney has not been charged with a crime and is expected to be released today (March 14) after 11 days behind bars.
Mooney’s father also spoke about his daughter’s detainment and believes the pressure put on authorities is part of the reason she is being released.
Speaking to CBS he said: “Jasmine’s a strong girl, but what she has gone through is … no one should do that.”
UNILAD has contacted the San Luis Regional Detention Center for comment.