Are Canadians Safe Travelling to the US?

The mother of a Vancouver woman being held in “deplorable” conditions after trying to enter the United States earlier this month is cautioning Canadians to reconsider any upcoming trips south of the border.

“Think not just twice, but three times, four times over,” Alexis Eagles said in an interview with The Tyee on Thursday. “Seriously reconsider those travel plans.”

Eagles’ daughter, Jasmine Mooney, was taken into custody last week as she was attempting to enter California from Mexico. Mooney, a Canadian citizen who was born and raised in the Yukon but has called Vancouver home since 2008, had previously been in the United States on a three-year work visa.

Her visa was revoked in November by a U.S. border agent at Vancouver International Airport as she was trying to re-enter the country after a visit to Vancouver, Eagles said. Mooney spent the months that followed travelling in Mexico and Guatemala and visiting family in Yukon over the holidays, before trying again to enter the United States on March 3.

When she approached U.S. border patrol last week with plans to attend a health conference and do some consulting work for a U.S. company, Mooney had a valid passport and a work visa application, and believed she had all her paperwork in order to cross into the country legally, Eagles said.

Instead, she was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, and held for three nights at a detention facility in San Diego. From there she was taken to Otay Mesa Detention Center, and then, one night at 3 a.m., she and 30 other women were rounded up, handcuffed, chained and moved to a facility in Arizona, where she remained on Thursday.

Mooney’s detainment follows several similar incidents in which travellers from the United Kingdom and Europe were detained for weeks under harsh conditions after attempting to enter the United States and being told they did not have the proper papers.

Experts told The Tyee the trend is alarming.

It comes as the United States levies heavy tariffs on Canadian goods, a move being met with counter-tariffs here at home. U.S. President Donald Trump has also threatened to annex Canada, repeatedly referring to the country as the “51st state.”

While the United States’ new attitude toward Canada might come as a shock to many Canadians, experts The Tyee spoke with said that, for many racialized travellers, fears about visiting our southern neighbour date back to xenophobic policies implemented during Trump’s first administration.

“Many racialized people living in Canada immediately recognized the tangible increased risk of travelling to the U.S. during the first Trump administration, especially immigrants,” said Lisa Brunner, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Migration Studies.

“However, most white Canadians are not used to thinking about crossing the U.S. border or interacting with law enforcement as risky. Whether they agreed with the first Trump administration’s xenophobic policies or not, I think they mostly saw them as impacting ‘other’ people.”

During the second Trump administration, “things have shifted,” Brunner said.

Canadians still receive certain special treatment, such as being exempt from fingerprinting under new Homeland Security rules that require all other foreign nationals travelling to the United States for more than 30 days to register.

“But it is unclear how the U.S.-Canadian relationship will evolve,” she added.

On Trump’s first day back in office, Jan. 20, the U.S. president signed an executive order significantly expanding U.S. legal authorities used to enforce immigration law.

The order, titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” describes “millions of illegal aliens” entering the United States, many of them “committing vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans.”

“Others are engaged in hostile activities, including espionage, economic espionage, and preparations for terror-related activities,” the order reads. “Many have abused the generosity of the American people, and their presence in the United States has cost taxpayers billions of dollars.”

The order authorizes authorities to take “all appropriate actions to ensure the detention of aliens apprehended for violations of immigration law” until they have been processed or removed from the country.

In emails to The Tyee, Global Affairs Canada sidestepped questions about whether the federal government would issue a travel advisory for the United States, a move Germany made last week regarding travel for transgender and non-binary people in response to a U.S. executive order banning gender-neutral passports.

Global Affairs said it is “aware of the detention of a Canadian citizen in Arizona” and is offering consular assistance, but declined to provide more information, citing privacy concerns.

“Every country or territory decides who can enter or exit through its borders,” a spokesperson added. “The Government of Canada cannot intervene on behalf of Canadian citizens with regard to the entry and exit requirements of another country.”

Earlier this week, the Guardian reported that British tourist Rebecca Burke had been detained by ICE last month after she was refused entry into B.C. from Washington state.

Burke had been staying with families in the United States and was planning to stay with a host family in Vancouver where she would carry out domestic chores in exchange for accommodation, her parents said. She was told by Canadian authorities that the arrangement “sounded like work” and she was returned to the United States to redo her paperwork.

It was upon re-entry to the United States that she was handcuffed and put in a cell, her father told the Guardian. Like Mooney, Burke reported being cuffed and taken to a U.S. detention centre, this one in Tacoma, Washington, that she described as “cold” and “close to capacity.”

“We haven’t got any clear timeline for her release,” Paul Burke said this week. “I really can’t understand why someone, a tourist, would be incarcerated and locked up.”

It’s common for travellers to subsidize travel by volunteering as domestic or farm workers in exchange for room and board, although these arrangements could represent a grey area.

In an email, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said that providing services without receiving payment does not equal volunteering and that, in most cases, visitors would be required to have a work permit.

UBC professor Irene Bloemraad, who is co-director of the Centre for Migration Studies, said that immigration officers have a certain amount of latitude to interpret the law in Canada and the United States. She compared the discretion to how police might respond to a jaywalker — while it may be illegal, it could be considered harmless and not prioritized.

Bloemraad advised anyone travelling to the United States to use caution, given the current administration’s focus on immigration and border control.

“Everyone appears to be treated with suspicion and with the presumption that people who want to spend extended time in the U.S. might be seeking to overstay visas or work without authorization,” Bloemraad said.

While U.S. law prohibits someone from working under a tourist visa, she said grey areas, like travelling for a conference, could be considered work. She pointed to Trump’s first presidency, when the government sometimes denied entry to musicians, arguing that the bands were planning to work in the country without proper authorization.

But, she added, they were not generally put into detention for extended periods. That appears to be changing, she said, adding that cases might increase once the 30-day registration rule goes into effect on April 11.

“There is, of course, a huge difference between being denied entry into the U.S. and being detained, which is essentially being jailed in horrid conditions,” Bloemraad said. “Arbitrary detention has regularly occurred, but very rarely for white citizens of Canada or Europe.”

In another recent case, German tattoo artist Jessica Brösche was detained by U.S. immigration authorities on Jan. 25 and spent more than six weeks in detention, including eight days she alleged were spent in solitary confinement. Brösche was arrested because she was carrying tattoo equipment, which authorities assumed was meant to be used to work illegally in the country. She was expected to be deported earlier this week.

In each case, the travellers were at a border crossing where they could not easily be returned to their home country.

Eagles said she believes that may have played a role in Mooney’s case. And while she doesn’t take issue with her daughter being denied entry or briefly detained, she said, “What I do have a problem with is the length of time that she's detained and the deplorable living conditions that she is in.”

Eagles has not been able to contact her daughter directly but has been getting information through an American friend who was able to set up a communication line.

“As Canadians, we are unable to establish communication from here,” Eagles said, adding that the system requires things like U.S. credit cards and contact information. “Anyone from outside the country can’t actually establish a communication line.”

She received word from Mooney’s lawyer that her daughter may be returned to Otay Mesa Detention Center today, which she said would be “a blessing,” as the facility has much better living conditions.

But it’s not clear why Mooney has not yet been deported home.

“We have the same question,” Eagles said.