French Jogger from BC detained for Crossing U.S. Border

French Jogger from BC detained for Crossing U.S. Border

File this under, “American Border Patrol is not just for Mexicans”!

We learn from Canadian news, that America protects its borders…period.

A visitor from France says she was jogging along the beach south of White Rock, B.C., when she crossed the U.S. border without realizing it. So began a two-week nightmare that landed her in a prison jumpsuit.

Cedella Roman, 19, didn’t know it at the time, but as she ran southeast along the beach on the evening of May 21, she crossed a municipal boundary — and, shortly after, an international border.

As the tide started to come in, she veered up and onto a dirt path before stopping to take a photo of the picturesque setting.

She turned around to head back — and that’s when she was apprehended by two U.S. Border Patrol officers.

“An officer stopped me and started telling me I had crossed the border illegally,” she told CBC News.

“I told him I had not done it on purpose, and that I didn’t understand what was happening.”

Perhaps it was an innocent mistake. But that doesn’t mean the border patrol shouldn’t do it’s job.

That’s why border patrol exists; to check people entering the premises. America’s border patrol agents did what any security would have done had someone entered a location under patrol, innocent or not. And what if this girl was being sex trafficked?

The article continues,

Roman, a citizen of France who had travelled to Canada to visit her mother in B.C. and work on her English, didn’t have any government-issued ID or travel permits with her.

Her mother lives in North Delta, B.C.

She said the officers detained her for crossing illegally into Blaine, Wash., and 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.”

This was almost certainly an innocent mistake. It’s likely this young lady didn’t know about international boundaries. But now she does.

What’s most interesting is how her mother reacted, however.

Roman said she was able to contact her mother, Christiane Ferne, who rushed to the detention centre to provide officers with documents including her passport and study permits.

Ferne said workers on site told her she had to present the documents to Immigration Canada to determine if Roman was eligible to be discharged back to Canada.

Roman was held in custody for two weeks before immigration officials on both sides of the border confirmed she was allowed back into Canada. Then she was transferred back into B.C.

“It was just unfair that there was nothing, no sign at the border,” said Ferne, who visited her daughter several times while she was detained. “It’s like a trap … anybody can be caught at the border like this.”

A trap?!

Sure, because America needs to trap people to come to our country. Or perhaps we put trespassers through the hassle, because we want to profit from illegals entering our country.

Why have requirements for passports, visa, and so on, if you’re not going to enforce their usage?

Consider what Mexico did to Sgt. Tahmooressi, when he accidentally took the wrong turn and ended up in their country.

We wrote of Tahmooressi’s plight in Sept of 2014:

For over 6 months, a Sgt. Tahmooressi has been stuck in a Third-World prison, where I guarantee you they are not worried about his access to a flat-screen TV and American grub.

Though Obama has done nothing to free Tahmooressi, things are moving forward.

Congressional Republicans are finally acting.

Republican Matt Salmon (AZ), along with Montel Williams are meeting with a subcommittee on October 1st to plead the Sergeant’s case.

Mistakes happen. And there are consequences.

This young lady was inconvenienced, and I’m sure there is a lesson in there for her.

I know if I were to somehow cross the border into Mexico, I would learn from Tahmooressi and do everything I can to get back to the states, even if it meant driving backwards.

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