Jasmine Mooney 03/19/2025
I grew up in Whitehorse, Yukon, a small town in the northernmost part of Canada. I started working when I was 12 years old and always knew I wanted to do something bigger with my life. I left home early and moved to Vancouver, BC, where I built a career spanning multiple industries — acting in film and television, owning bars and restaurants, flipping condos, and managing Airbnbs. But in my 30s, I left everything behind and found my true passion in health and wellness. I was given an incredible opportunity with an American brand to help launch an innovative beverage called Holy! Water — a line of health tonics made with holistic ingredients designed to promote metabolic health and longevity. It became my newfound purpose, something I dedicated everything to because I truly believed this product would help so many people.
After a minor issue with my paperwork, I was granted my TN work visa on my second attempt and started working in California. I had no idea that that one minor issue would avalanche into a series of unfortunate events down the line. I consider myself to be a kind, hard-working person. I have no criminal record, I love America, and I genuinely wanted to be a part of helping make the country a healthier place.
I travelled back and forth between Canada and the US with my visa multiple times without any complications — until one day, when I was returning to the U.S. from Canada for work. A border officer started questioning me about my initial visa denial and approval. He asked why I had gone to the San Diego border the second time to apply. I explained that it was a minor paperwork issue and that I had gone to San Diego because that’s where my lawyer was based. He wanted to accompany me to ensure there were no issues. The officer told me it seemed “shady” and that my visa wasn’t properly processed. After a long interrogation, he claimed there was also a discrepancy with one of the beverage ingredients — hemp — and revoked my visa. He told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the U.S., I would need to reapply for a new visa.
I was devastated because I had just started to build a life in the U.S. with Holy! Water. I stayed in Canada for the next few months. Eventually, I was offered a similar position with a different health and wellness brand and went to reapply for my work visa.
I returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it. After hours in the immigration office, with many confused opinions about my case, the officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I wasn’t aware I had to apply that way and that I would do that instead. Then she said something strange: “You didn’t do anything wrong, you are not in trouble, you are not a criminal.” I remember thinking, Why would she say that? Of course, I’m not a criminal.
She then told me they had to send me back to Canada. That didn’t concern me — I assumed I would simply book a flight home. But as I sat searching for flights, a man suddenly approached me.
“Come with me,” he said.
There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands, and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. A woman immediately began patting me down. The commands came rapid-fire, one after another, too fast to process.
They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.
“What are you doing? What is happening?” I asked.
“You are being detained.”
“I don’t understand? What does that mean? For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
That would be the response to nearly every question I asked over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”
They brought me downstairs for a series of interviews and medical questions, searched my bags, and told me I had to get rid of half my belongings because I couldn’t take everything with me.
“Take everything with me where?” I asked.
A woman asked me for the name of someone they could contact on my behalf. In moments like this, you realize you don’t actually know anyone’s phone number anymore. By some miracle, I had recently memorized my best friend Britt’s number because I had been putting my grocery points on her account. I gave them her phone number.
Then they handed me a mat and a folded-up sheet of aluminum foil.
“What is this?”
“Your blanket.”
“I don’t understand.”
I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.
(Photo I found for a visual representation)
For two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was, and no one answered our questions. No one in the cell spoke English, so I either tried to sleep or meditate to keep from having a breakdown. I didn’t trust the food, so I fasted, assuming I wouldn’t be there long.
On the third day, I was finally allowed to make a phone call. I called Britt and told her that I didn’t understand what was happening, that no one would tell me when I was going home, and that she was my only contact.
They gave me a stack of paperwork to sign and told me I was being given a five-year ban unless I applied for reentry through the consulate. The officer also said it didn’t matter whether I signed the papers or not, it was happening regardless.
I was so delirious that I just signed. I told them I would pay for my flight home and asked when I could leave. No answer.
Then they moved me to another cell — this time with no mat or blanket. I sat on the freezing cement floor for hours. That’s when I realized they were processing me into real jail.
I was told to shower, given a jail uniform, then fingerprinted, and interviewed. During one of the interviews, I begged for information.
“How long will I be here?”
“I don’t know your case,” the man said. “Could be days. Could be weeks. But I’m telling you right now — you need to mentally prepare yourself for months.”
Months.
I felt like I was going to throw up.
I was taken to the nurse’s office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me. She had never seen a Canadian here before. When I told her my story, she looked at me, grabbed my hand, and said, “Do you believe in God?”
I told her I had only recently found God, but that I now believe in God more than anything.
“I believe God brought you here for a reason,” she said. “I know it feels like your life is in a million pieces, but you will be okay. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help others.”
At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept.
I felt like I had been sent an angel.
I was then placed in a real jail unit — two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet.
(Otay Mesa Detention Center)
The best part, there were blankets. After three days without one, I wrapped myself in it and finally felt some comfort.
For the first day, I didn’t leave my cell. I chose to continue fasting, terrified that the food might make me sick. The only available water came from the tap attached to the toilet in our cells or a sink in the common area — neither of which felt safe to drink. Needless to say, I avoided that too.
Eventually, I forced myself to step out, meet the guards, and learn the rules. One of them told me, “No fighting.”
“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” I joked. He laughed.
I asked if there had ever been a fight here.
“In this unit? No,” he said. “No one in this unit has a criminal record.”
That’s when I started meeting the other women.
That’s when I started hearing their stories.
And that’s when I made a decision — I would never allow myself to feel sorry for my situation again. No matter how hard this was, I had to be grateful. Because every woman I met was in an even more difficult position than mine.
There were around 140 women in our unit. Many had lived and worked in the U.S. legally for years but had overstayed their visas — often after reapplying and being denied. They were all detained without warning.
I think we can all agree that if someone is a criminal, they should be taken off the streets. But not one of these women had a criminal record. These women acknowledged that they shouldn’t have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration wasn’t about being held accountable — it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they were trapped in. The real issue was how long it took to get out of the system, with no clear answers, no timeline, and no way to move forward. Once deported, many have no choice but to abandon everything they owned because the cost of shipping their belongings back was too high.
I met a woman who was on a road trip with her husband. They had ten-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped before crossing and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.
I met a family of three who had been living in the U.S. for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center. There were multiple families with the same story.
Women were picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes — One woman’s daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release.
Another woman from Canada had been living in the U.S. with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks already because she didn’t have her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?
One woman had a ten-year visa. When it expired, she moved back to her home country, Venezuela. She admitted she had overstayed by one month before leaving. Later, she returned for a vacation and entered the U.S. without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to LA, she was picked up by ICE and detained. She couldn’t be deported because Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees. She doesn’t know when she is getting out.
There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on new, valid visa to finish her master’s degree and was handed over to ICE due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.
All of these women have been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months.
That night, the pastor invited me to a service she was holding. A girl who spoke English translated for me as the women took turns sharing their prayers — prayers for their sick parents, for the children they hadn’t seen in weeks, for the loved ones they had been torn away from.
Then, unexpectedly, they asked if they could pray for me. I was new here, and they wanted to welcome me.
They formed a circle around me, took my hands, and prayed. I have never felt so much love, energy, and compassion from a group of strangers in my life. Everyone was crying.
At 3am I was woken up in my cell.
“Pack your bag. You’re leaving.”
I jolted upright. “I get to go home?”
The officer shrugged. “I don’t know where you’re going.”
Of course. No one ever knew anything.
I grabbed my things and went downstairs, where ten other girls stood in silence, tears streaming down their faces. But these weren’t happy tears. That was the moment I learned the term “transferred”.
For many of these women, detention centers had become a twisted version of home. They had formed bonds, established routines, and found slivers of comfort in the friendships they had built. Now, without warning, they were being torn apart and sent somewhere new. Watching them say goodbye — clinging to each other was gut-wrenching.
I had no idea what was waiting for me next. In hindsight, that was probably for the best.
Our next stop was Arizona. The transfer process lasted 24 hours — a sleepless, grueling ordeal. This time, men were transported with us. Around fifty of us were crammed into a prison bus for the next five hours, packed together — women in the front, men separated in the back. We were bound in chains that wrapped tightly around our waists, with our cuffed hands secured to our bodies and shackles restraining our feet, forcing every movement into a slow, clinking struggle.
(Photo I found for a visual representation)
When we arrived at the new detention facility, we were forced to go through the entire intake process all over again — medical exams, fingerprinting, they made us take pregnancy tests — lined up in a filthy cell, squatting over a communal toilet, holding Dixie cups of urine while the nurse dropped pregnancy tests in each of our cups. It was disgusting.
We sat in freezing cold jail cells for hours, waiting for everyone to be processed. Across the room, one of the women suddenly spotted her husband. They had both been detained and were now seeing each other for the first time in weeks.
The look on her face — pure love, relief, and longing — was something I’ll never forget. It’s the kind of love I hope everyone gets to experience at least once in their lifetime.
By the time we arrived in our cell, we were beyond exhausted. I felt like I was hallucinating.
The guard tossed us each a blanket, “Find a bed.”
There were no pillows. The room was ice cold, and one blanket wasn’t enough. Around me, women lay curled into themselves, heads covered, looking like a room full of corpses. This place made the last jail feel like the Four Seasons.
I kept telling myself, do not let this break you.
The food was even worse than before. If the first jail’s meals looked expired, this food looked like it had been forgotten in a storage closet for decades. Mystery meat, beans and hot dogs dumped onto a tray — things that barely resembled food. I eventually had to start trying to eat and sure enough, I got sick. We were given one Styrofoam cup for water and one plastic spoon that we had to reuse for every meal. None of the uniforms fit. Everyone had men’s shoes on. The towels they gave us to shower were hand towels. 30 of us shared one room. They wouldn’t give us more blankets. The fluorescent lights shined on you 24/7. Everything in this place felt like it was meant to break you.
Nothing was explained to us. I wasn’t given a phone call. We were locked in this room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out. Morale was at an all-time low.
I tried to stay calm as every fiber of my being was raging towards panic-mode. I didn’t know how I would tell Brittany where I was. Then, as if sent from God, one of the women showed me a tablet attached to the wall where I could send emails. I only remembered my CEO’s email from memory. I typed out a message, praying he would see it.
He responded.
Through him, I was able to connect with Brittany. She told me that they were working around the clock trying to get me out. But no one had any answers. The system made it next to impossible. I told her about the conditions in this new place and that was when we decided to go to the media.
She started working with a reporter and asked if I would be able to call her so she could loop him in. The international phone account that Britt had previously tried to set up for me wasn’t working, so one of the other girls offered to let me use her phone account to make the call.
We were all in this together.
(San Luis Regional Detention Center)
With nothing to do in this cell but talk, I made new friends — women who had risked everything for the chance at a better life for them and their families. Through them, I learned the harsh reality of seeking asylum. Showing me their physical scars, they explained how they had paid smugglers anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 USD to reach the U.S. border, enduring brutal jungles and horrendous conditions. Along the way, they had passed through United Nations government-funded camps where officials reassured them that they were following the right process, that they were on the path to their American Dream. But when they finally arrived, instead of opportunity, they were locked away in a system that saw them not as people, but as case numbers — waiting, still waiting, for someone to decide their fate.
One woman had been offered asylum in Mexico within two weeks but had been encouraged to keep going to America. Now, she was stuck, living in a nightmare, separated from her young children for months. She sobbed, telling me how she felt like the worst mother in the world.
Many of these women were highly educated. They spoke multiple languages. Yet, they had been advised to pretend they didn’t speak English because it would supposedly increase their chances of asylum.
Some believed they were being used as examples. Warnings to others not to try to come.
One of the women told me about flights back to India and China from here. People were told they were leaving, loaded onto planes — thinking they were heading somewhere in America. They woke up back in their home countries with no memory of the flight. They believe they were all sedated.
It didn’t make sense. If the U.S. government didn’t want asylum seekers, why let them make the journey at all? Why were people guided all the way to the border just to be shipped back — or detained in a system for months designed to break them before tossing them back into society?
Women were starting to panic in this new facility, and knowing I was most likely the first person to get out they wrote me letters and messages to send to their families.
(Some of the letters given to me from the women I met)
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.
I didn’t have answers for these women. All I could do was listen. But despite everything, I witnessed something very beautiful happen.
We were from different countries, spoke different languages, and practiced different religions. Yet, in this place, none of that mattered. Everyone took care of each other. Everyone shared food. Everyone held each other when someone broke down. Everyone fought to keep each other’s hope alive.
I got a message from Brittany. My story had started to blow up in the media because of the reporter I had talked to on the phone.
Almost immediately after, I was told I was being released.
My ICE agent, who had never spoken to me, told my lawyer I could have left sooner if I had signed a withdrawal form, and that they didn’t know I would pay for my own flight home.
From the moment I arrived, I begged every officer I saw to let me pay for my own ticket home. In nearly two weeks, not a single one of them ever spoke to me about my case.
To put things into perspective — I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family, and even politicians advocating for me. And yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks.
Now imagine what this system is like for every other person in there — people who don’t have my privilege.
A small group of us were transferred back to San Diego at 2 a.m. — one last road trip, once again shackled in chains. I was then taken to the airport where two officers were waiting for me. The media was there, so they snuck me in through a side door trying to avoid anyone seeing me in restraints. I was beyond grateful that, at the very least, I didn’t have to walk through the airport in chains.
To my surprise, the officers escorting me were incredibly kind — and even funny. It was the first time I had laughed in weeks.
I asked if I could put my shoelaces back on.
“Yes,” one of them said with a grin. “But you better not run.”
“Yeah,” the other added. “Or we’ll have to tackle you in the airport. That’ll really make the headlines.”
I laughed, then told them I had spent a lot of time observing the guards during my detention and I couldn’t believe how often I saw humans treating other humans with such disregard — especially those who weren’t criminals.
“But don’t worry,” I joked, “You two get five stars.”
When I finally landed in Canada, my mom and two best friends were waiting for me. So was the media. I spoke to them briefly, numb and delusional from exhaustion.
It was surreal listening to my friends recount everything they had done to get me out — working with lawyers, reaching out to the media, making endless calls to detention centers, desperately trying to get through to ICE or anyone who could help. They said the entire system felt rigged, designed to make it nearly impossible for anyone to get out.
After some research, the reality became clear — ICE detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.
Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain. The more prisoners, the more money they make. They don’t lobby for stricter immigration policies in the name of national security — they do it to protect their bottom line.
CoreCivic made over $560 million from ICE contracts in a single year. GEO Group rakes in billions.
These companies have no incentive to release people quickly. Instead, they cycle detainees between facilities, profiting off every transfer, every additional day behind bars.
What I had experienced — what I had witnessed — was finally starting to make sense.
I wrote this essay to spread awareness, to spark compassion, and to remind people that silence is complicity. That when we see injustice, we have a choice — to look away or to stand up.
Even in the darkest places, within the most broken systems, humanity persists. And sometimes, it reveals itself in the smallest, most unexpected acts of kindness — a shared meal, a whispered prayer, a hand reaching out in the dark.
We may come from different backgrounds, speak different languages, and live different lives, but at our core, we are the same — human beings searching for connection, dignity, and hope.
The strength I witnessed in those women, the love they gave despite their suffering, is what gives me faith. Faith that no matter how flawed the system, how cruel the circumstances, humanity will always shine through.
This experience showed me that we are not defined by borders, paperwork, or bureaucratic labels. We are defined by the love we extend, the courage we summon, and the truths we are willing to tell — even when they are painful.
I wrote this not just to share my story, but in the hope that someone out there — someone with the power to change this — sees it, feels it, and can help do something. Because this is not just my story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people still trapped in a system that profits from their suffering.
This is why I choose to tell their stories. Because when we choose to see each other — when we refuse to look away — we begin to build the world we all deserve.
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