Canadian entrepreneur and actor Jasmine Mooney, popular for her role in American Pie Presents, said that she was detained for almost two weeks in "inhumane" conditions by the US border authorities over an incomplete visa. 

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Mooney was detained on March 3 in San Diego, California, as her work visa to the US was reportedly revoked in November 2024 while traveling from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and she was attempting to file a new application.

Mooney was detained at the San Ysidro border crossing between Mexico and San Diego, the busiest land border crossing in the world, her mother, Alexis Eagles, said.  

Eagles said that instead of sending Mooney to Canada or asking her to fix her application, the US Customs and Border Protection officers arrested her.

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The 35-year-old Canadian citizen Mooney, who had been offered a marketing job with a US-based health and wellness startup, said that what happened next blindsided her. 

“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 centre where she was being held.

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'Inhumane' conditions

The Canadian actor spent three nights in detention, and then she was transferred. Mooney's mother said, "We eventually learned that about 30 people, including Jasmine, were removed from their cells at 3 am and transferred to the San Luis detention centre in Arizona."

She complained that they were 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.”

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Every time Mooney was transferred, she was handcuffed and in chains, her mother claimed. 

“I have never in my life seen anything so inhumane,” Mooney told ABC 10. 

“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.”

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(With inputs from agencies)