Detained for Hemp Water My ICE Nightmare

The fluorescent lights hummed relentlessly above me as I curled tighter under the crinkling aluminum foil—a material I’d last encountered wrapping organic kale salads for my health beverage startup. Just seventy-two hours earlier, I’d been in a San Diego conference room discussing metabolic hydration formulas with investors. Now I lay on a concrete slab in an Arizona detention center, my Canadian passport reduced to a meaningless booklet in the hands of a system that saw me only as Case #28741.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to someone like me—a serial entrepreneur who’d built businesses across North America, most recently launching Holy! Water, a line of functional tonics designed to boost immunity and longevity. I’d crossed that San Ysidro border checkpoint half a dozen times with my TN work visa, smiling at customs officers while mentally reviewing pitch decks. Until one agent decided my explanation for choosing San Diego’s processing center—’that’s where my lawyer practices’—sounded ‘shady.’

The aluminum foil blanket tore as I shifted, its metallic scent mixing with the industrial cleaner they’d used to hose down the communal toilet bolted to our cell wall. Six of us shared this freezing space, the women around me whispering in languages I didn’t recognize. Their faces flashed in the strobe-like flicker of the never-off lights—a far cry from the soft Edison bulbs of California wellness cafes where I’d demoed our hemp-infused elixirs.

That hemp ingredient became Exhibit A in my undoing. A minor paperwork discrepancy during my initial visa application snowballed into a Kafkaesque nightmare where logic dissolved like the questionable protein lumps in the detention center’s breakfast trays. As I pressed my palms against the cement floor—still wearing the same blazer I’d worn to my investor meeting—the absurdity vibrated through me: How does someone go from discussing retail distribution channels to being fingerprinted like a criminal in seventy-two hours?

Through the cell’s small window slit, I watched the moon trace its path across the desert sky. The same moon that had illuminated Vancouver’s seawall where I’d jogged at dawn, that had witnessed countless border crossings between the country of my birth and the nation where I’d built my dreams. Tonight it illuminated the barbed wire coils atop the detention center’s walls, their shadows stretching like skeletal fingers across the floor.

Somewhere beyond those walls, my team was probably fielding calls about delayed product samples. Meanwhile, I practiced the breathing exercises I’d learned in yoga teacher training, counting inhalations to drown out the clanging gates and shouted commands. The irony tasted bitter—I’d devoted years to studying wellness modalities, only to find myself in an environment engineered to dismantle mental and physical health.

When the guard’s flashlight beam swept across my face during hourly checks, I’d glimpse my reflection in the security glass—a woman who still wore traces of conference room lipstick, her usually sleek bob now matted from three days without shampoo. The disconnect between that reflection and reality made me question if I’d slipped into some dystopian corporate team-building exercise gone horribly wrong.

But the whimpers from the woman beside me—a pastry chef from Guadalajara separated from her toddler—grounded me in grim reality. As did the guard’s bored monotone when I asked for the hundredth time when I might contact a lawyer: ‘Processing takes as long as it takes.’

In the stagnant air of that holding cell, surrounded by women clutching aluminum shrouds, I began understanding immigration detention’s cruel genius—its ability to make even privileged holders of blue passports feel the vertigo of statelessness. The system’s indifference became its most effective weapon, eroding certainty one unanswered question at a time.

By dawn’s first light, I’d stopped wondering when I’d get out. Instead, I started observing how the system worked—the way guards avoided eye contact to dehumanize us, how the lack of clocks created temporal dislocation, why they’d confiscated my shoelaces but left me with a belt. These weren’t arbitrary measures but calculated psychological stressors, the same techniques used in interrogation manuals I’d researched for a screenplay years earlier.

The aluminum foil crackled as I sat up, its sound oddly festive—like some perverse Christmas wrapping. For the first time since my detention began, a laugh bubbled up. Maybe this was the moment the system wanted to break me. Instead, it sparked my journalist’s instinct: If I ever got out, I’d document every detail. Not just for my sake, but for the Venezuelan grandmother in the corner praying silently, for the Indian grad student who’d overstayed her visa by seventy-two hours, for all of us caught in this profit-driven limbo.

As the rising sun painted the desert pink, I began mentally drafting what would become this account—not knowing then that my real education about ICE detention centers was just beginning, or that the most profound lessons would come not from the system’s cruelty, but from the extraordinary women enduring it with me.

The first time I applied for my TN work visa, I never imagined a bottle of hemp-infused water would become my bureaucratic undoing. As a Canadian entrepreneur launching Holy! Water – a line of metabolic health tonics – I’d meticulously prepared my application. The ingredients were all legal, FDA-approved, and clinically tested. Yet when the border officer spotted ‘hemp’ listed among the botanicals, his expression hardened like concrete.

“This contains cannabis,” he declared, sliding my paperwork across the counter with finality.

I blinked at the rejection notice. Our product contained 0.0% THC – the psychoactive compound in marijuana. The hemp seed extract we used was no different than the hemp hearts sold at Trader Joe’s. But in that moment, I learned my first brutal lesson about U.S. immigration: facts matter less than an officer’s interpretation.

Three months later, I tried again – this time at the San Ysidro crossing near San Diego. My immigration lawyer had suggested this location specifically. “They process more TN visas than any other port,” he explained, showing me Department of Homeland Security statistics. “Approval rates are 22% higher here for Canadian professionals.”

What should have been a routine application turned surreal when the CBP officer fixated on my choice of location. “Why San Diego?” he demanded, flipping through my documents. “Your company’s based in Los Angeles.”

“That’s where my lawyer practices,” I answered honestly, gesturing to the attorney standing beside me. “He thought it would be -“

“Shady.” The officer cut me off, stamping my passport with a force that made me flinch. “This whole thing seems shady.”

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d left a successful acting career to promote evidence-based wellness, yet here I was being treated like a drug smuggler because of health tonics and legal counsel. As they led me to secondary inspection, I noticed the officer hadn’t even opened my lab reports or FDA compliance certificates.

In the interrogation room, fluorescent lights hummed overhead while two agents tag-teamed questions:

“Who really owns Holy! Water?”
“Why would a Canadian want to work in America?”
“Are you aware hemp is illegal under federal law?” (It isn’t.)

After four hours, they revoked my existing visa – the one I’d used successfully for eight months – citing “material misrepresentation.” No specifics given. No appeal process explained. Just a five-year reentry ban unless I applied through a U.S. consulate, which they claimed was “standard procedure.”

Later, my lawyer would show me the actual regulation: TN visa holders can apply at any port of entry. My choice of San Diego was perfectly legal. The hemp confusion? Easily verifiable with a 30-second Google search. But in that moment, none of that mattered. I was learning the hard way how quickly “legal” becomes “illegal” when you’re at the mercy of a system designed for compliance, not justice.

As I walked back across the border into Tijuana (the only exit route they allowed), a thought crystallized: This wasn’t about hemp or geography. It was about power – specifically, who has the absolute power to decide your fate with zero accountability. And I was just beginning to understand how dangerous that imbalance could be.

The 72-Hour Identity Stripping Experiment

The aluminum foil crinkled under my fingers as I stared at the thin sheet they called a “blanket.” In that moment, I realized this wasn’t just about physical discomfort – it was the first step in a calculated process to erase who we were. They took our shoelaces, our belts, anything that could be used as a weapon or a tool for self-harm. But the real weapons being confiscated were our dignity and sense of self.

For three relentless days, the fluorescent lights never dimmed. Time became meaningless in that concrete cell where five other women lay wrapped in their own metallic shrouds. The constant illumination wasn’t about safety – it was psychological warfare. Without darkness, there could be no true rest, no private moments to collect your thoughts. Just endless exposure under the sterile glow that turned every hour into the same as the last.

The Canadian passport in my back pocket might as well have been a library card for all the good it did me. I’d foolishly believed citizenship from a G7 nation would offer some protection, some special consideration. But the system doesn’t discriminate in the ways you expect. When you’re processed into ICE detention, you’re no longer a person with achievements or rights – you’re a body taking up space, a problem to be managed.

They fed us twice daily with meals that looked and smelled like punishment. I chose to fast, not just from fear of contamination, but because accepting their food felt like accepting this new reality. The tap water tasted metallic, like it had been piped directly from the radiator. We drank from small paper cups that disintegrated in our hands after a few uses.

On the second day, they allowed me to make a single phone call. My hands shook as I dialed my best friend’s number – the only one I could remember in my disoriented state. Through the scratched plexiglass divider, I whispered “I don’t know when I’m coming home” before the officer ended the call. That moment shattered any remaining illusion that this would resolve quickly.

The paperwork came next – stacks of documents thrust at me with instructions to sign. The officer’s monotone voice explained I was receiving a five-year ban from entering the U.S., whether I signed or not. The absurdity nearly made me laugh – here I was, a health entrepreneur who’d built a business to help people, being treated like some hardened criminal because of a paperwork discrepancy.

When they moved me to the real jail unit, the cold of the cement floor seeped through my clothes before they finally issued a real blanket. That first moment wrapping myself in actual fabric after days with only aluminum foil brought tears to my eyes. Such a simple thing I’d taken for granted my entire life suddenly felt like the greatest luxury.

The guards called it “processing” but I came to understand it as something far more sinister – an institutionalized stripping away of identity. Without our clothes, our possessions, our control over basic bodily functions, we became easier to manage. The system depends on this dehumanization, this reduction of complex human stories into simple case numbers.

Yet even in this carefully designed environment meant to break spirits, humanity persisted. The women around me – mothers, students, professionals – found ways to preserve their dignity. They shared smuggled hair ties, fashioned makeshift pillows from rolled-up uniforms, whispered words of encouragement in the dark. Their resilience became my compass in those first disorienting days, proof that the system hadn’t completely won.

What shocked me most wasn’t the physical conditions, but how quickly I began adapting to them. By the third day, I caught myself thinking of the aluminum foil as “my blanket” and the concrete cell as “my room.” The psychological shift happened almost without my noticing – the way the mind tries to normalize even the most abnormal circumstances when given no other choice.

This chapter of my story revealed the immigration detention system’s open secret: it’s not designed for rehabilitation or justice, but for control. The fluorescent lights, the confiscated shoelaces, the meaningless paperwork – none of it serves any practical purpose beyond reminding you that you no longer belong to yourself. And if they could do this to a Canadian business owner with resources and connections, imagine what happens to those without any safety net at all.

The Economics of Shackles: How Profit Chains Bind Human Lives

The fluorescent lights of the detention center still burned behind my eyelids when the guards came at 3 AM. As we shuffled into the transport bus – fifty souls clinking in synchronized misery – the metallic bite of waist chains pressing into my hips made the business model painfully clear. Each rattle of our shackles sounded like coins dropping into a corporate till.

Five Hours in Corporate Custody

The prison bus smelled of industrial cleaner masking something more primal – sweat, fear, and the acrid tang of urine from the overflowing toilet in back. They’d given us no water since Arizona, yet somehow we still needed to pee. My hands, cuffed to the chain around my waist, could barely reach the Dixie cup they’d tossed at me like I was a dog performing tricks.

Every bump on Interstate 8 sent shockwaves through our shackled limbs. Beside me, a Guatemalan grandmother whispered prayers through cracked lips, her rosary beads confiscated as ‘potential weapons.’ The temperature control was broken – alternating between arctic blasts from the AC and sweltering heat when the engine idled. Later I’d learn GEO Group billed ICE $87 per detainee for these ‘climate-controlled transports.’

The Daily Rate of Human Warehousing

That $87 was just the beginning. As we were processed into the new facility (another $120/day charged to taxpayers), I did the math through sleep-deprived haze:

• $42 for the ‘nutritionally adequate’ meals (moldy bread, rancid baloney)
• $28 for the ‘sanitary bedding’ (one threadbare blanket crawling with lice)
• $15 medical surcharge (the nurse who diagnosed my UTI with a shrug)

All while GEO Group’s stock (NYSE: GEO) paid shareholders $0.48 quarterly dividends. The corporation’s 2022 annual report boasted $2.36 billion revenue, with detention operations accounting for 46% – all funded by our suffering.

The Transfer Racket

They moved us like inventory between facilities not for security, but to trigger additional payments:

1. Intake processing fee ($225 per head)
2. Transportation markup (billed at 300% of actual cost)
3. ‘Special handling’ charges ($75/hour for shackled detainees)

When the Indian grad student next to me vomited from motion sickness, the guard joked, ‘That’s another $50 cleaning fee.’ We weren’t people – we were line items on a government contract.

Breaking the Chain

Yet in that darkness, I felt hands gripping mine – the Salvadoran cook, the Nigerian student, the Ukrainian grandmother – all whispering in broken English: ‘Tell them.’ Their warmth cut through the steel more effectively than any lawyer’s motion. The shackles couldn’t bind what mattered most: our shared humanity and the stories we carried like contraband hope.

As dawn leaked through the bus’s mesh windows, I made a promise to those sleeping heads lolling on my shoulders. Their worth would never be reduced to a daily rate. Their voices would echo in corporate boardrooms. And this profit chain? We’d break it together.

The Prayer Circle: A Parallel Universe Behind Bars

The fluorescent lights hummed incessantly above us, casting sterile shadows across the concrete floor where we sat cross-legged. Maria from Venezuela adjusted her oversized men’s jumpsuit before passing me a carefully folded note in Spanish. Through gestures and broken English, I understood it contained her daughter’s birthday wish – a simple request for her mother’s embrace that the detention system had turned into an impossible dream.

The Mathematics of Injustice

Among the 140 women in our unit, Priya’s story crystallized the absurdity of our situation. With her master’s degree in mathematics from a prestigious Indian university, she could calculate complex algorithms but couldn’t solve the equation that trapped her: 3 days = 10 months. Her student visa had expired three days before her planned departure last year. When she returned months later with a brand new visa to complete her degree, border officials flagged the previous minor overstay. Now, the promising data scientist spent her days teaching us origami with commissary napkins, her skilled hands folding delicate cranes that mocked the bureaucratic iron bars surrounding us.

The Road Not Taken

Then there were Pastor Elena and her husband, their clerical collars long confiscated, who showed me photos of their Arizona congregation on a smuggled smartphone. During a routine border-area road trip, they’d accidentally turned into an exit lane marked only in Spanish. The surveillance cameras that should have confirmed their story mysteriously ‘malfunctioned’ that hour. Their ten-year legal residency unraveled in minutes when ICE agents dismissed their documents with the same indifference we’d all encountered. Their current Bible study group met every Tuesday in Cell Block C, studying scripture passages about liberation on contraband tissue paper pages.

The Communion of the Dispossessed

What began as isolated tragedies transformed into collective resistance through our nightly prayer circles. Women from twelve countries created an unspoken liturgy:

• The Offering: Shared commissary snacks (a bag of Cheetos became sacred host)
• The Readings: Passages from memory – Quranic verses, Catholic prayers, Maya Angelou poems
• The Homily: Each woman’s story, translated through chain interpretation
• The Benediction: A Yoruba chant, Hindu mantra, and Christian ‘Amen’ in unison

The guard we nicknamed ‘Smiley’ would sometimes pause during headcount, uncomfortable with the palpable humanity disrupting his routine. On those nights, the concrete walls seemed to breathe with us, the scent of tamarind candies and jasmine shampoo cutting through the antiseptic stench.

The Paper Trail to Nowhere

We developed an underground archive system:

1. Legal Documents: Folded into paper airplanes and sailed between cells during recreation hour
2. Family Photos: Hidden behind peeling paint chips, swapped during shower rotations
3. Court Dates: Memorized using childhood jump rope rhymes to combat the ‘lost paperwork’ phenomenon

The Indian graduate student created a statistical model showing 87% of us had pending cases older than the ICE-mandated 30-day review period. We laughed bitterly when guards called this ‘processing’ – as if we were supermarket items being scanned, not humans with dissolving futures.

The Economics of Hope

Our most sacred ritual involved the ‘freedom ledger’ – a notebook where women recorded what they’d do if released:

The notebook’s spine cracked from use, its pages smudged with tears and fingerprints. We didn’t need psychologists to tell us this exercise maintained sanity; watching Consuelo describe her pupusa recipe in sensual detail could make us forget we hadn’t tasted fresh cilantro in months.

The Bureaucracy of Mercy

When winter brought frost to the Arizona desert, our unit developed an intricate blanket-sharing system worthy of a Swiss watchmaker. The Indian mathematician calculated optimal rotation schedules, while the Venezuelan architect designed layered folding techniques to maximize warmth. Even ‘Smiley’ looked the other way as we redistributed resources, his clipboard suddenly needing attention during our covert operations.

One frigid morning, we awoke to find new blankets stacked neatly outside our cells – no forms, no signatures, just silent humanity piercing the institutional veil. That night, our prayer circle included the nameless guard who’d risked protocol to ease our shivering. Hope, we learned, often wears a uniform.

The Calculus of Survival

As days blurred into weeks, we became amateur legal scholars, parsing each other’s cases with the intensity of Supreme Court justices. The pastor’s husband, a former accountant, created a flowchart showing how:

Minor Visa Issue
→ Detention
→ Lost Documentation
→ Extended Stay
→ Private Facility Profit

The whiteboard we improvised from a cereal box became our war room, mapping strategies with the precision of military tacticians. Our weapons? Memory, solidarity, and the radical act of remembering each other’s birthdays when calendars were contraband.

The Ephemeral University

In what we jokingly called ‘Detention U,’ our multinational faculty offered:

• Economics 101: How GEO Group’s stock price rises with each detainee
• Political Science: The lobbying power of private prison unions
• Culinary Arts: 50 ways to flavor instant ramen with commissary items
• Theater: Reenacting immigration court scenes with satirical twists

The Salvadoran nurse taught us pressure points for anxiety attacks. The Nigerian hairdresser braided hope into intricate cornrows. My contribution? Business strategies for when – not if – they rebuilt their lives outside. Our classroom had no desks but overflowed with doctorates in resilience.

The Liberation Library

When a contraband newspaper revealed my story had gone viral, the women reacted not with jealousy but tactical excitement. They helped me memorize messages for the outside world:

• “The Guatemalan seamstress needs her bond receipt number – it’s in her Bible’s Psalms”
• “Tell the Indian girl’s professor her thesis data is safe in a locker at Greyhound Station”
• “The Russian grandmother’s medication schedule is taped inside her left shoe”

We practiced whispering these through pretend interviews, our voices blending into a singular cry for justice. That night, our prayer circle included journalists, lawmakers, and the conscience of a nation we still believed could hear us.

As ice cracked in the desert outside, something thawed within our concrete cocoon. The system wanted us isolated, but we’d built a parallel universe where every stolen dream found sanctuary. They’d intended these walls to divide, but we’d turned them into a mosaic of improbable hope – one paper crane, one shared blanket, one memorized case number at a time.

The Media Lever: How Spotlight Pressure Cracked the System

The moment my story hit the newsstands, ICE’s indifference evaporated like morning fog. What two weeks of legal petitions couldn’t achieve, a single journalist’s phone call accomplished in 48 hours – a textbook case of how public scrutiny forces accountability in shadowy systems.

The Before-and-After Timeline

Pre-Media Involvement (Days 1-12):

• Lawyer Calls: 37 attempted contacts with ICE caseworkers
• Response Rate: 2 callback voicemails total
• Standard Reply: “Processing times vary” (auto-email)

Post-Media Break (Day 13):

• 08:00 AM: Canadian Press publishes exposé
• 10:30 AM: ICE media relations emails reporter for “clarifications”
• 1:15 PM: Detention center receives “case review” directive
• 3:00 PM: My shackles are removed for first photo op
• Day 14: Release paperwork magically appears

This wasn’t coincidence – it’s the unwritten rule of immigration detention. When cameras roll, bureaucrats scramble. That’s why Step 1 of changing this system starts with breaking the silence.

Your 4-Step Action Toolkit

1. Amplify Hidden Stories

• Follow/documentary teams exposing detention conditions (@DetentionWatch @RAICESTEXAS)
• Share detainee art/letters (like those smuggled to me) using #SilencedNoMore

1. Starve the Profit Motive

• Use Congressional Contract Tracker to monitor ICE’s $3.4B private prison contracts
• Pressure pension funds divesting from CoreCivic (template letters @AFSC_org)

1. Flood the Switchboards

• Congressional Directory: Find Your Rep
  Sample Script: “As your constituent, I demand oversight hearings on ICE’s [Your State] detention center conditions.”

1. Be the Emergency Contact

• Volunteer with Freedom for Immigrants‘ detention hotline
• Keep $20 phone cards ready – many detainees’ only lifeline

What shocked me most? How simple leverage points – a reporter’s notepad, a viral tweet thread – can outweigh years of legal motions. The women I met wrote their pleas on napkins because they believed someone, somewhere would listen. This chapter exists so you can prove them right.

Epilogue: From Healing Waters to Healing Systems

The aluminum foil blanket crinkles under my fingers as I write these final words—a sound that will forever transport me back to those fluorescent-lit cells. Holy! Water was meant to promote metabolic health, but this journey taught me that some toxins can’t be flushed out with tonic ingredients. The real detox needed is systemic.

The Letters That Redefined Purpose

Tucked inside my journal are fragile slips of paper—notes passed to me by women who may still be detained as you read this. One reads in careful Spanish: “Por favor, no nos olvides” (“Please don’t forget us”). Another contains a phone number and the plea: “Tell my daughter I’m alive.” These aren’t artifacts; they’re living testaments to the human cost of a $3.3 billion detention industry.

The Privilege Paradox

My Canadian passport eventually became my golden ticket out—a privilege none of my fellow detainees possessed. Yet the bitter irony lingers: the same system that released me because of media pressure continues profiting from those without platforms. CoreCivic’s stock price rose 22% last quarter while asylum seekers I met marked their 200th day in detention.

Where Light Persists

In the detention center’s chapel (a repurposed storage room), I witnessed something extraordinary—Hindu, Christian, and Muslim women holding hands during nightly prayers. Their makeshift interfaith circle became my masterclass in resilience. When systems try to dehumanize, the most radical act is choosing dignity anyway.

Your Next Right Thing

This isn’t where the story ends. Here’s how we write the next chapter together:

1. Follow the money: Track ICE contracts in your state via Detention Watch Network
2. Amplify voices: Share stories from Freedom for Immigrants
3. Political leverage: Use RAICES‘s tool to message representatives about detention reform

The women’s final words to me weren’t pleas for pity—they were battle cries: “Tell them we’re still fighting.” Consider this my hand reaching through the bars to pass theirs to you. The aluminum blanket may be gone, but its imprint—like the system’s scars—remains. What we do with that discomfort defines what comes next.

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” —Notes from Otay Mesa Detention Center, Cell Block 2