Jogger Detained After Crossing the Border
Compared to the stream of horrors playing out near the U.S.-Mexico border, our northern boundary has been relatively quiet. But if you thought the Canadian border was immune from our awful immigration practices, think again. Last month, a 19-year old jogger was detained for two weeks after she accidentally ran into the U.S. from Canada.
French citizen Cedella Roman was visiting her mother in Canada last month when she jogged across the border from White Rock, British Columbia into Blaine, Washington. Roman, like a normal person, didn’t bring her passport or travel permit with her on the jog, and was stopped by Border Control agents on her way home. Roman thought that her error would merit a fine at most, and that she’d be returned to Canada. Instead, as she told the CBC, she spent the next two weeks in a U.S. detention center.
[She said the officers] transferred her more than 200 kilometres south to the Tacoma Northwest Detention Centre, run by the Department of Homeland Security. "They put me in the caged vehicles and brought me into their facility," she said. "They asked me to remove all my personal belongings with my jewelry, they searched me everywhere."
"Then I understood it was getting very serious, and I started to cry a bit.”
Even though Roman was permitted to contact her mother, who quickly arrived at the detention center with the teen’s paperwork, Roman was still held for two weeks before being returned to Canada.
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