Jasmine Mooney is a Canadian who got caught in the nightmare that is run by ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) and held for nearly two weeks in appalling conditions because of a slight suspected irregularity in her visa documentation. Even though she offered to buy a ticket to return to Canada, they moved her around to various harsh detention detentions before finally releasing her. She has now written about her experience.

Many people from other parts of the world are treated like dirt by ICE agents. Why I have chosen to highlight her particular story is for three reasons. One is that if a young, white, fairly affluent, Canadian woman could be treated like this, one can only shudder at what poor people of color from other countries experience. The second is that she can write in the first person in English and that makes her story more compelling and accessible to English speakers than others. The third is that while she was shuttled around the various detention centers, she spoke with other women she was herded with and wrote about their stories. What emerges is that many of them were seized and imprisoned for minor visa irregularities but treated as if they were dangerous criminals.

First she describes her own case. She had been granted a visa earlier.

I was granted my trade Nafta work visa, which allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the US in specific professional occupations, on my second attempt. It goes without saying, then, that I have no criminal record. I also love the US and consider myself to be a kind, hard-working person.

I started working in California and travelled back and forth between Canada and the US multiple times without any complications – until one day, upon returning to the US, a border officer questioned me about my initial visa denial and subsequent visa approval. 

But on the last occasion of her arrival, things suddenly turned ugly..

There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer.

She had her shoes taken away and was shackled as she was moved to different detention centers where she was kept in tiny, very cold rooms with lights permanently on with a mat to lie on and a piece of aluminum foil to use as a highly ineffective blanket. And sometimes even these ‘luxuries’ were denied her.

She recounted the. stories that other detained women told her.

There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.
…

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.

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 met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped 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 US 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.

Another woman from Canada had been living in the US 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 because she hadn’t had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?

One woman had a 10-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 US without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to Los Angeles, she was picked up by Ice and detained. She couldn’t be deported because Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees. She didn’t know when she was 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 a 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.

The horror stories go on, people treated like trash for minor visa irregularities and infractions.

When you add this story to the one about another young, white woman from Germany who was treated similarly harshly over her visa and even put into solitary confinement, you have to conclude that people come to America at their peril. Unless they have every i dotted and t crossed on their visa paperwork, they should not even think of coming here. But even proper paperwork may not save them, so arbitrary is ICE behavior. No one should even think of voluntarily coming here as a tourist and perhaps not even for employment or study, if they have any other options at all. So the end result of Trump’s policies is that the only people who would try to come to the US are the very desperate, the ones who are poor and fleeing persecution, the very people he does not want, so that brutal treatment by ICE is a price they are willing to pay and a risk they are willing to take

While one factor that drives this harsh treatment of people by ICE is undoubtedly xenophobia mixed with willful cruelty, Mooney says that there is a profit motive involved as well. Of course there is, because this is the US where private profit is the God.

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.

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, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.

It was not always thus. Two years after my arrival in 1975 in the US on a student visa to attend graduate school, my father died suddenly and I returned to Sri Lanka for the memorial service. Before I left the US, my university gave me a thick envelope containing what, in my ignorance and innocence, I thought was the visa document to allow me to return to the US. When I arrived back in New York and gave that packet to the immigration official, he was incredulous and said that that was not a visa, merely the paperwork to get a visa. I had not known that I was supposed to take that packet to the US embassy in Colombo and get a new visa before coming back. I remember being horrified at my error and thinking that I would be sent back immediately to Sri Lanka. But the officer, while gruff, must have seen my shock and taken pity on me and allowed me into the country, with a warning to never do that again. If this happened today, I cannot imagine what my fate would have been, since I was young, male, brown, and heavily bearded, the very stereotype of a terrorist.