American Pie actress in prison hell after being detained for 12 days

An actress who played a role in the hit 2000s film has broken her silence after being detained for twelve days at the border between Mexico and the US.

An actress who played a small role in one of the hit 00s American Pie films has broken her silence after being detained for twelve hellish days while at the border between Mexico and the US.

Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney, who is now a co-founder of the health-focused tonic drink brand Holy! Water, was detained at the San Ysidro border between Mexico and San Diego on March 3.

It is understood the 35-year-old was attempting to enter the US from Mexico when she was stopped at the border, and authorities questioned her about her work visa, which she had applied for twice.

The second time Ms Mooney applied, she went to her lawyer’s office in person — which sits near the San Diego border. Her lawyer wanted to accompany Ms Mooney to ensure there were no issues the next time she applied.

But to the interrogation officer, Ms Mooney said this detail seemed “shady” and that’s when the long, horrific ordeal of being detained for 12 days began.

American Pie actress Jasmine Mooney has spoken out after being detained.

Ms Mooney, who appeared in a scene in American Pie Presents: The Book of Love in 2009, said she was transported three times over 12 days, hadn’t slept in 24 hours, and still had no answers as to why she was detained, according to the New York Post.

In a piece published on The Guardian, Ms Mooney explained the conditions she faced while detained — saying that nobody “deserves to go through what I witnessed.”

“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,” she explained.

“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 centre without the chance to talk to a lawyer.”

But before she knew it, a man at the centre said three words that changed everything.

“There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands.

“A woman immediately began patting me down. The commands came rapid-fire, one after another, too fast to process. They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.

“What are you doing? What is happening?” I asked. “You are being detained.”

Ms Mooney explained that after some time, she was taken to a “tiny, freezing cement cell” with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet.

Ms Mooney made it back to Canada after being detained for 12 days.

She claims there were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminium sheets wrapped over them, “looking like dead bodies”.

“The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no-one answered our questions,” she explained of the stay in the cell, which latest for two days.

“No one in the cell spoke English, so I either tried to sleep or meditate to keep from having a breakdown. I didn’t trust the food, so I fasted, assuming I wouldn’t be there long.”

Ms Mooney was then moved to an actual jail unit where she described the setting as “two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies”.

“There were blankets. After three days without one, I wrapped myself in mine and finally felt some comfort,” she wrote in the essay, adding she was then taken to Arizona at the San Luis Regional Detention Centre.

Mexico's National Guard officers check cars heading to the United States at the San Ysidro crossing port in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico. Picture: Guillermo Arias / AFP.

“The transfer process lasted 24 hours, a sleepless, gruelling ordeal. This time, men were transported with us. Roughly 50 of us were crammed into a prison bus for the next five hours, packed together – women in the front, men in the back,” she penned, adding the group were bound in chains “that wrapped tightly around our waists, with our cuffed hands secured to our bodies and shackles restraining our feet.”

On March 15, Ms Mooney was finally released and officially made it back to Vancouver.

Speaking to journalists awaiting her arrival at the city’s International Airport, Ms Mooney said she was still “processing everything”

“I haven’t slept in a while and haven’t eaten proper food in a while, so I’m just really going through the motions,” adding that she would “never in a million years” have gone to the border had she thought there was “even a possibility” she could be detained.

“I do not wish it upon anyone. No one deserves to go through what I witnessed,” she said.

“I still don’t even know how I’m home. My friends and my family and the media are the reason, I think, that I’m home.”