SAN DIEGO, Calif. — A step closer tonight to a story that’s making headlines around the world. A Canadian woman detained by ICE is now on her way back to Canada.
“They woke me up at 2 a.m. in Arizona. They drove me back to San Diego in chains in a bus and I sat in a cell all day and then they finally took me here,” said Jasmine Mooney, in an interview Friday night from the tarmac at the San Diego airport.
Team 10 spotted a white deportation van with blacked out windows just before 5 p.m. outside the airport. As soon as an officer saw Team 10 filming on the sidewalk, he drove away.
This is the van the U.S. government kept Canadian Jasmine Mooney in tonight. Once we started filming the van outside the San Diego airport, officers drove off & took her to a back entrance. Jasmine says this was to avoid our news camera. She says she was chained in the van. pic.twitter.com/XCDQeatXi0
— Austin Grabish (@AustinGrabish) March 15, 2025
“They drove off and then they took me in the back because they didn't want any media attention, so they just snuck me in,” Mooney said.
The former actress and business entrepreneur said she saw Team 10 before the officers took off.
“I was in the back, all like, in chains.”
The 35-year-old called Team 10 moments after getting her phone at the gate as she boarded a flight to Vancouver. She is expected to be on Canadian soil late Friday night.
“If it wasn't for Brittany and my friends with a ton of resources and my family and you guys and your story, I would still be in there.”
Mooney tried to enter the San Diego border last Monday with paperwork for a TN visa along with a job offer. She previously worked in Los Angeles for a health beverage company but lost her visa after an officer revoked it at the Vancouver airport.
She described her time at crowded ICE detention centers in Arizona and San Diego as “inhumane.”
Mooney said it felt surreal as she sat on the tarmac Friday night in no handcuffs.
“It feels like I feel like I'm in a movie. I don't even know. I'm just like in shock. Truly.”
She said the guards who took her to the gate were professional. “They were so lovely. They were so nice. They were looking through all my paperwork. They were looking at my case and they're just like dumbfounded.”
ICE didn’t respond to a request Friday night from Team 10 asking why officers took off preventing our camera from capturing her release from their vehicle.
The agency previously said Mooney didn’t have the proper documentation to be in the United States and was arrested under President Donald Trump’s securing the border executive order.
Mooney’s arrest by ICE follows the detention of two German nationals who also had visa issues at the San Diego border recently.
Their stories of being detained were similar to Mooney’s and have made international headlines as the Trump administration continues a crackdown on immigration.
CBP and ICE have not said why the foreign nationals were not turned back to Mexico.
