The Free Press
I am a Canadian who loves America. Over the last year, I have lived in LA, working for a U.S. health and wellness brand, and on March 3, I went to reapply for my TN work visa—the type that allows professionals from Canada and Mexico to stay in the U.S.
The last time I did this, in 2024, it was an easy process. As before, I went to the San Ysidro immigration office in San Diego, where previously my visa was easily obtained in just 30 minutes. But this time was different.
I waited six hours while I was shuffled between various officers confused by my situation. Then an immigration officer told me 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 stated that my first application in 2024 had been denied because my company’s letterhead had been missing from my documents. Because of this tiny discrepancy, and because my current visa had been voided, I was told I had to go to the consulate in Canada to reapply for a new TN visa.
I assumed I would simply book a plane home. But as I sat searching for flights on my phone, an officer dressed in a black uniform suddenly approached me.
“Jasmine, follow me,” he said casually.
He led me to a room where another officer, a woman, was waiting. That’s when they started peppering me with commands. They grabbed my luggage and my phone without asking for permission, and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. The female officer began patting me down. They told me to take off my shoes and pull out my shoelaces. (Later, I found out they have you remove your shoelaces so you don’t try to hang yourself while in a cell.)
“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.”
For the next two weeks, that would be the response to nearly every question I asked: “I don’t know.”
The two officers brought me into another room to measure my height and weight; they made me take a pregnancy test; they jabbed me with a needle to test my allergies. They searched my handbag and luggage, and told me I had to get rid of half my clothing because I couldn’t take everything with me.
“Take everything with me where?” I asked.
The female officer asked me for the name of a contact, but I didn’t have my phone. In moments like this, you realize you don’t actually know anyone’s number anymore. But by some miracle, I had recently memorized the number of my best friend Britt, a Canadian living in Vancouver, and gave it to the officer. I told her to ask Britt to call my lawyer, my family, and anyone she could think of who could help me.
But the officer said, “All I can do is tell her you’ve been detained.”
Then she handed me a mat and a folded-up sheet of aluminum foil.
“What is this?”
“Your blanket.”
“I don’t understand.”
Then, I was placed in a tiny, freezing cement cell at the immigration office. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them. The cell had bright fluorescent lights overhead and a single toilet, visible to everyone. The guard locked the door behind me.
That’s when I realized I had become a detainee in America. Over the next two weeks, I joined about 200 other women who had been put in cells for different reasons under either the Biden or the Trump administration. Some had overstayed their welcome in the U.S.; others had problems with their visas like me. Some even had legitimate immigration papers but had been caught up in the system for a freak reason. And like me, not a single one of the women I met had a criminal record.
Compared to my fellow detainees, I am lucky. I’ve had a long career in different industries, including as an actress. Ironically, when I was 19, I appeared in a spin-off of American Pie—playing an all-American girl in that all-American cult classic. More recently, I had been helping launch a line of health tonics for the American company Holy! Water. I also have access to lawyers and resources, and I have friends and family who can advocate for me.
For the next two days, six of us remained in that cell. Anytime I saw a guard I would ask what was going on, but no one ever gave me an answer, although one apologized to me for what was happening. There were no windows, and the lights were never turned off. There were no clocks on the walls, so we didn’t know what time it was. No one in the cell except me spoke English, so I either tried to sleep or meditate to stop myself from having a breakdown.
On the third day, an officer told me I was allowed to make a phone call. I was taken to an office where I called Britt and told her 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. Britt said she had called my family and my lawyer and was getting me an immigration lawyer. “I’m on top of it,” she promised me.
After the call ended, the officer sat me at her desk and gave me a stack of paperwork to sign. She told me I would be banned from the country for five years unless I applied for reentry through the consulate. But then she said it didn’t matter whether I signed the papers or not, the five-year ban would happen regardless.
I was so delirious I just signed. I told them I would pay for my flight home and asked when I could leave. No answer.
After that, I was placed in a van with other detainees and brought to Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, where I was put in another holding cell—this time with no mat or blanket. I sat on the freezing cement floor for at least 10 hours. Then an officer told me to get up: I had to shower and change into a navy blue jumpsuit. I was so exhausted and scared and shocked I did whatever I was told.
Afterward, I was fingerprinted, and a male officer asked me psychological evaluation questions, such as “Do you ever talk to aliens?,” “Have you ever been suicidal?,” “Have you ever been associated with gangs?,” and “Have you ever been sexually assaulted?”
After I answered the questions, 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.
Then I was taken to the nurse’s office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me and said 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 believed 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.”
She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept.
After I had been processed, I was then taken to the main part of the center, with two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like a prison in the movies. For the first day, I didn’t leave my cell, even though it was unlocked three times a day around mealtimes when we could hang out in the common area. I decided to keep fasting, terrified that the food might make me sick. The only drinking water came from a tap attached to the toilet in our cells or a sink in the common area—neither of which felt safe. So I avoided that too.
After 24 hours, I forced myself to step out of my cell at lunchtime, 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.”
He told me that’s why everyone in the center was wearing a navy blue jumpsuit. It meant no criminal record.
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. These women acknowledged that they shouldn’t have overstayed their visas and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration didn’t come from the fact they’d been held accountable ; it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they were trapped in. They said no one gave them clear answers, or a timeline, or a way to move forward.
“How long will I be here?” I asked. “I don’t know your case,” an officer replied. “Could be days. Could be weeks. But I’m telling you right now—you need to mentally prepare yourself for months.”
One woman told me she and her husband were from Portugal, and that they had 10-year work visas to work as pastors in the U.S. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. She said border guards stopped them before they crossed; they told the agent they didn’t have their passports, and expected to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. She told me her husband was being held in a different unit.
I also met two sisters in their early 20s, along with their mother, who were from Honduras and had been living in the U.S. for 11 years with work authorizations. They told me they paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but last February, she was told to bring her whole family, and when they arrived, they were all taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.
Another woman from Canada said she 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 said she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks already because she didn’t have her passport. Another woman from Venezuela had a 10-year visa. She had stayed in the country one month after it expired, and moved back to her home country, but returned last January for vacation, and had entered the U.S. without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to LA, she said she was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained. She said she couldn’t be deported because Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees, although that policy has since changed.
All these women had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months.
On my second day in detention, the pastor invited me to a service she was leading. A girl who spoke English translated for me as the women took turns sharing their 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. Everyone was crying.
The next day, I was woken up in my cell at 3 a.m.
“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 10 other women 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.
Our next stop was Arizona. The transfer process lasted 24 hours—a sleepless, grueling ordeal. Around 50 of us were crammed into a prison bus for the next five hours, packed together—women in the front, men in the back. We were bound in chains 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.
When we arrived at the new detention facility, we were forced to go through the entire intake process all over again—medical exams, fingerprinting, lining 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.
We sat in freezing cold 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, and look on her face was filled with pure love, relief, and longing . But they were not allowed to embrace.
By the time we arrived in our cells, we were beyond exhausted. 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. I kept telling myself, “Do not let this break you.”
We were served white bread, mystery meat, beans and hot dogs dumped onto a tray, ready-made mashed potatoes, and scrambled eggs created from powder. I didn’t eat anything because I didn’t trust the food. I eventually had 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. All the women were wearing men’s shoes. We were given hand towels to dry off with after showering. Thirty of us shared one room. Fluorescent lights shone on us 24/7. Nothing was explained to us. I wasn’t given a phone call.
I tried to stay calm as every fiber of my being raged toward panic mode. I didn’t know how I would tell Britt where I was. Then, as if sent from God, one of the women showed me an electronic tablet attached to the wall where I could send emails. I could only remember my CEO’s email address. I typed out a message, praying he would see it.
Next time I checked the tablet, I saw a response from him connecting me with Britt. Eventually Britt emailed and told me she was working around the clock with lawyers trying to get me out. She also put me in touch with Austin Grabish, a reporter for ABC10 News, a local affiliate in San Diego, because he had previously covered stories like mine. On March 12, one of my fellow inmates generously gave me her one call to speak to him, because she knew I could be a voice for our plight.
As I waited for him to tell my story, I made new friends, women who knew the harsh reality of seeking asylum. Some showed me their scars, and explained how they had paid smugglers anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to reach the U.S. border, enduring brutal jungles and horrendous conditions along the way. They told me that they had passed through United Nations centers 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 forever for someone to decide their fate.
It didn’t make sense. 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?
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.
Then, I got a message from Britt. My story had come out, and was now blowing up. Forty-eight hours after I spoke to the reporter, I was told I was being released. An ICE agent told my lawyer that I had been detained because I wasn’t willing to pay for my flight home, which was not true.
A small group of us were transferred back to San Diego at 2 a.m.—one last road trip, once again while shackled in chains. I was then taken to the airport where two officers were waiting for me. Austin, the ABC 10News reporter, was there with a cameraman, to capture images of me in shackles, but officers escorted me through a side door.
To my surprise, the officers escorting me were incredibly kind—and even funny. 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.”
When I finally landed in Canada, my mom and two best friends were waiting for me. So were three reporters, along with camerapeople, from different media outlets. They asked me how it felt to be home, and all I could say was, “I’m still in shock, and I haven’t slept in 24 hours.” When I finally got to my home in Vancouver, friends told me 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 The 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, which owns and runs the detention center I stayed in, made over $550 million from ICE contracts in a single year. They profit off every transfer between facilities, every additional day behind bars. What I had experienced suddenly started to make sense.
Despite everything that has happened, I refuse to let this experience jade my feelings toward America. I loved the life I built there—the friends who became family, the job that gave me purpose, the countless memories that shaped me. Even though I am banned for five years from returning to the U.S., I am grateful I can still work remotely for an American company, allowing me to pursue my passion for health and wellness.
Meanwhile, I am going to be appealing my ban and using my voice to shed light on this abuse of human rights in America, a country that has given me so much opportunity. After all I’ve been through, I want to stand up for those who have been silenced. If my experience can help others in my situation who are less fortunate than me, then everything I have endured will have been worth it.
