SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A story Team 10 broke on a Canadian woman who was arrested by ICE after being denied entry at the San Diego border was raised during Sen. Cory Booker's historic speech in Washington, D.C.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker made history on the Senate floor for his 25-hour and 5-minute-long speech that ended Tuesday night.
The senator’s speech protested the Trump administration’s sweeping actions on issues ranging from immigration to funding cuts in education and health care.
For more than 20 minutes, Booker spoke about Canadian citizen Jasmine Mooney, who Team 10 reported on in March.
The 35-year-old former actress and business entrepreneur was detained for 12 days after trying to get a visa at the San Diego border.
“Canadian citizen Jasmine Mooney was detained by ICE for two weeks. I saw an interview of her, this white woman, stunned,” Booker said.
He read a lengthy essay penned by Mooney detailing her nightmare in detention.
“They linked us up in a filthy cell squatting over a communal toilet holding Dixie cups of urine while the nurses 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,” Booker read on the Senate floor.
Mooney spoke to Team 10 in an exclusive interview from an Arizona immigration detention center last month. The story went viral and made headlines around the world.
She is the third foreign national detained by ICE after trying to enter the San Diego border from Mexico that’s spoken to Team 10.
In each case, no one at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency that determines who can be admitted to the U.S., or ICE has said why the travelers were not allowed to return to Mexico instead of being sent to a private detention center.
Immigration attorneys have told Team 10 they are baffled and say their clients previously could withdraw their entry to the U.S. and turn around.
After Team 10’s reporting on Mooney and two German citizens who were detained, the Canadian and German governments updated their travel advisories for citizens coming to the U.S.
Booker said in his speech that the current administration’s “reckless behavior” is eroding everyone’s rights.
“We know once due process is eliminated in this country for some, all are in danger. It is a constitutional slippage that [former Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia and conservatives who believe in the constitution nobly object to,” Booker said, before reading Mooney’s account of her time in detention.
ICE deported Mooney back to Canada last month and told Team 10 she was detained under the president’s executive order on securing the border. The agency said she didn’t have proper legal documentation to be in the U.S.
Mooney was given a five-year ban from returning to the country.
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