Jasmine Mooney, the Canadian entrepreneur and actress, has returned to Canada after being detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this month. Speaking with reporters at Vancouver International Airport on Saturday, March 15, Mooney shared that she is “still really processing everything.”
The actress is best known for her role in American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (2009). Mooney now co-founded the Los Angeles-based wellness brand Holy! Water. She discussed her experience with CTV News and other media outlets upon her return back to Canada.
“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,” Mooney said.
The former actress previously shared that she had been visiting her hometown of Vancouver in November when she learned that her three-year work visa had been revoked. Hoping to renew it, she planned to travel to San Ysidro, Calif.—where she had previously obtained a visa—bringing new job-related paperwork to facilitate the process.
However, when she attempted to enter the U.S. via the Mexico border on March 3, she was denied entry. Rather than being turned away, Mooney said she was taken into custody by ICE and spent several nights detained in various facilities across the southwestern U.S. She described the conditions as “inhumane” and likened the experience to a “deeply disturbing psychological experiment.”
Now back in Canada, Mooney recounted her journey, which involved being transported from Arizona to San Diego before finally returning to Vancouver. Speaking to reporters, she revealed that she had not spoken to “anyone” for 12 days.
“No one told me anything. Not once,” Mooney said. “I still don’t even know how I’m home.”
“My friends and my family and the media are the reason, I think, that I’m home,” she added.
According to the Vancouver Sun, Mooney’s mother confirmed that she was “home safe and sound” in Abbotsford, British Columbia,in Canada.
An ICE spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE on Monday, March 17, that Mooney was detained on March 3 for “lacking legal documentation” to enter the U.S. and was “processed in accordance” with President Donald Trump’s Securing Our Borders executive order.
As previously reported, Mooney told San Diego ABC News affiliate KGTV that she and other detainees were shackled and confined, enduring up to 24 hours in chains.
Initially, she was held for three nights at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, where she claimed she was placed in a cell, forced to sleep on a mat without blankets, and wrapped in aluminum foil “like a dead body” for two and a half days.
In the days that followed, Mooney was transported between multiple detention facilities across the southwestern U.S. She alleged that during one transfer to the San Luis Detention Center in Arizona, she remained in chains for an entire 24-hour period.
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