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      US war plans leak shows Five Eyes allies must ‘look out for ourselves’, says Mark Carney

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      Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has said the inadvertent leak of classified military plans by senior US officials means that allied nations must increasingly “look out for ourselves” as trust frays with a once-close ally.Speaking a day after it was revealed that a journalist was accidentally included in a group chat discussing airstrikes against Yemeni rebels, Carney said the intelligence blunder was a “serious, serious issue and all lessons must be taken”. He said it would be critical to see “how people react to those mistakes and how they tighten them up”.Canada is one of the members of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, alongside Australia, New Zealand and the UK and the leak of classified information is likely to put further strain on the group as it weighs how seriously the current American administration takes the handling of top secret information.The revelations came as Canada grapples with a rapidly deteriorating relationship with the United States, its largest trading partner and closest military ally.“My responsibility is to plan for the worst, is to think about the most difficult evolution of the new threat environment, what it means for Canada and how do we best protect Canada,” Carney said during a campaign stop on Tuesday. The prime minister called a snap election on Sunday.“Part of that response is to be more and more Canadian in our defence capabilities, more and more Canadian in our decisions … We have to look out for ourselves.”Asked about the incident on Tuesday, the UK’s armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, told the Commons Defence Committee that no British service personnel had been put at risk as a result.He added: “All UK service personnel are covered by our normal approach to operational security, and the committee will understand that I won’t go into the details of how we keep our involvement in any support for military operations in the Red Sea or anywhere else [secure].“But we’ve got high confidence that the measures that we have got with our allies, including the United States, remain intact.”A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke at length at a briefing about the contribution the UK makes to joint military operations with the Americans. However, the spokesperson refused to directly criticise the two figures who were most critical of Europe’s record on defence, JD Vance, the vice-president, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. The spokesperson also insisted that the UK remains happy to share intelligence with the US despite the leak.The government of New Zealand declined to comment on the matter. When asked by the Guardian if the security breach had raised concerns about the sharing of sensitive intel with Trump’s administration, the offices for New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, and the minister for defence, Judith Collins, said the situation was “a matter for the US administration”.Behind closed doors, senior government officials would likely be discussing the risks of sharing intelligence with the US, amid what could be viewed as a lowering of protocol standards, but the breach would not be a dealbreaker, said Andrew Little, whose ministerial roles covered security, intelligence and defence under New Zealand’s last Labour government.“Our relationship transcends individual administrations and individual political leaders. There will be things that – like everybody – members of this government, will be looking askance at. But I think it’s about managing the relationship in the long run,” Little said.So far, New Zealand has been managing its US relationship responsibly, Little said, but it was now “a relationship that requires constant vigilance”.Robert Patman, a professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin who specialises in international relations, called the security breach “extraordinary” and “cavalier”. “It does confirm what many of us felt, that Mr Trump has picked people according to loyalty, rather than competence, and this was almost a perfect storm waiting to happen,” Patman said.But the wider issue for New Zealand and other Five Eyes countries was knowing how to respond to the Trump administration’s “radical departure” from the rules-based order, which included making territorial claims against liberal democracies and siding with Russian president Vladimir Putin over negotiations in Ukraine.“We should be friendly towards the Trump administration where our interests converge, but this administration is doing things which are fundamentally a challenge to [New Zealand’s] national interests.”In Australia, the department of foreign affairs and trade said: “This incident is a matter for the United States. Australia and the United States engage regularly on implementation of mutually recognised standards for the protection of classified material.”Ben Doherty contributed additional reporting More

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      In Canada, I saw how Trump is ripping North America apart – and how hard its bond will be to repair | Andy Beckett

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      As wealthy but lightly defended countries have often learned, being close to a much more powerful state – geographically or diplomatically – can be a precarious existence. All it takes is an aggressive new government in the stronger state and a relatively equal relationship of economic and military cooperation can suddenly turn exploitative, even threatening.Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, this realisation has been dawning across the west, but nowhere more disconcertingly than in Canada. Its border with the US is the longest in the world: 5,525 miles of often empty and hard to defend land, lakes and rivers. Canada’s two biggest cities, Toronto and Montreal, are only a few hours to the north, were you to approach them in a US army tank.Earlier this month, I spent a week in some of this particularly vulnerable stretch of Ontario and Quebec, visiting my daughter at university and encountering a new, more anxious Canada. At times, as the trains I took crawled along the congested trans-Canadian rail corridor, the roofs of individual American buildings were visible, glinting in the cold sun across the border. The feeling of being a foreigner in a tense, contested place reminded me of when I lived in West Germany, near the East German border, during the early 1980s, one of the most fraught phases of the cold war.Until Trump started talking so insistently about making Canada his country’s “51st state”, that would have been an absurd comparison. But not any more. “The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country,” said the new Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, in his first speech as Liberal leader. “If they succeed, they will destroy our way of life.” Supposedly one of the most harmonious – and strategically important – relationships between rich western countries appears to have changed radically.The Canadians I spoke to, in shops, at bus stops and stations, at home and by email, were generally less dramatic about the situation than Carney, who has a reputation as a leader to establish, and now an election to win next month. There was some anger at the US – and at Britain’s failure to condemn Trump’s threats against a Commonwealth country. “The king is proud to align himself with a despot for … a dangled trade agreement,” a Montreal academic told me, referring to King Charles’s recent invitation to Trump to make a second state visit to Britain. “A bold response from us in Canada would be to cut our ties with the monarchy.”More often, however, people shook their heads or rolled their eyes at Trump’s behaviour. He was crazy, chaotic, totally inconsistent, people told me – not like a steady and realistic Canadian, they implied. There were satisfied smiles at the tariff-driven slide in the US stock market. And yet, people also said, Trump’s threats meant that Canadian life would have to change profoundly. Though what those changes might be was a topic they generally avoided – except for a baker in Montreal, who sold me some sourdough while we discussed whether Canada would need to get nuclear weapons.Relations between America and Canada have not always been peaceful. The US invaded Canada in 1775 and 1812, without success. During the 1920s and 1930s it drew up a more hypothetical invasion scheme, War Plan Red. In fundamental ways, fear of the US shaped Canada, encouraging its unification out of what had originally been disparate territories, and also the decision to site its capital in Ottawa, further from the border than its other eastern cities.As in Britain, in the mid-20th century the Canadian state sought to create what it called a “special relationship” with the US. Canada’s export-oriented economy – necessary because of the country’s relatively small and scattered population – got access to US markets. US businesses got access to prosperous Canadian consumers, often close to America’s manufacturing heartlands. During the cold war, both countries saw Canada as a key place to build defences against Russian attack.With Trump seemingly much closer to Moscow than Ottawa, that North American alliance may in effect be dead. By area, Canada is the world’s second-biggest country after Russia, but its armed forces are tiny, about half the size of Britain’s. The feeling that Canada has been abandoned militarily by the US possibly explains the huge “Fuck Trump” flag I saw flying from the back of a pickup truck in the usually polite city of Kingston, Ontario, home of the Royal Military College of Canada.Economic ties will take longer to unravel. There were still California carrots on Montreal supermarket shelves, and my trains were passed by endless goods wagons from the famous old American freight company Union Pacific. Yet the number of Canadians visiting the US is already plummeting: last month it was as low as during the latter stages of the pandemic. In this, as in much else, Canada may be an early adopter of new habits regarding the US which then spread across what is left of the liberal west. For left-leaning foreigners, Americana and American places may lose much of their appeal, because the US has been made so authoritarian and hostile to outsiders by such a quintessentially American figure.Canada is self-consciously following another path. “Canada is a mosaic,” says Carney, and pro-diversity messages pour out of its government and businesses, as if calculated to wind up US conservatives. As well as vast, increasingly coveted supplies of water and minerals, Canada – despite its considerable inequalities and very heavy per capita carbon footprint – offers an increasingly different model of how to live on the North American continent.Will Trump or any hard-right successors in the White House allow this provocation to continue? Another US invasion may not actually be imminent. Trump already has too many ambitious policy goals. Conquering, let alone occupying, as enormous and physically extreme a country as Canada would be an intimidating prospect even for the fantasy-driven Republicans.Yet it’s equally hard to imagine US-Canadian relations returning quickly to their former state. Too many imbalances and contrasts between the countries have been pointed out, too many threats offered. Trust has been lost. Political careers are being made on both sides by acting tough towards the neighbouring government.Canadians are less known than Americans for flying the flag, but there were a lot of them fluttering along the border this month. It may be many years before they come down.

      Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist More

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      US tourism industry faces drop-off as immigration agenda deters travellers

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      A string of high-profile arrests and detentions of travellers is likely to cause a major downturn in tourism to the US, with latest figures already showing a serious drop-off, tourist experts said.Several western travellers have recently been rejected at the US border on increasingly flimsy grounds under Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, some of them shackled and held in detention centers in poor conditions for weeks.Germany updated travel guidance for travelling to the US, warning that breaking entry rules could lead not just to a rejection as before, but arrest or even detention. Three German citizens have been held for prolonged periods despite apparently having committed no crime nor any obvious violation of US visa or immigration rules – including one US green card holder who was detained at Boston’s Logan airport.The UK Foreign Office, too, has bolstered its advice to warn of a risk of arrest after Becky Burke, a tourist from Wales who had been backpacking across America, was stopped at the border with Canada and held for three weeks in a detention facility. Last week members of the UK Subs, a British punk band, were denied entry and detained after they landed at Los Angeles international airport.Even before the most recent spate of detentions, forecast visits to the country this year had been revised downward from a projected 5% rise to a 9% decrease by Tourism Economics, an industry monitoring group, which cited “polarising Trump Administration policies and rhetoric”, particularly around tariffs.It predicted that the drop-off would lead to a $64bn shortfall in the US tourist trade.“There’s been a dramatic shift in our outlook,” said Adam Sacks, the president of Tourism Economics, told the Washington Post. “You’re looking at a much weaker economic engine than what otherwise would’ve been, not just because of tariffs, but the rhetoric and condescending tone around it.”The decline has been most pronounced from neighbouring Canada, which Trump has menaced with crippling tariffs and repeatedly threatened to annex outright. The number of Canadians returning by road from the US fell by 23% in February, year on year, while air traffic fell 13% on a year earlier, according to Canadian government statistics.A Canadian actor made headlines this week when she revealed US authorities had handcuffed her and moved her out of state to a detention center, where she spent several weeks in “inhumane conditions” despite not having been accused of any crime.Neri Karra Sillaman, an entrepreneurship expert at Oxford University, told Fast Company that travellers now viewed entering the US as “too difficult or unpredictable”.“Even if you get a visa, you have the risk of being detained or to be denied,” she said, adding that even as a valid US visa holder, married to an American, she was hesitating to visit the country in the current climate.That climate was in further evidence this week as Denmark and Finland issued cautionary advice to transgender travellers, following US state department rule changes spurred by the Trump administration decree that it would recognise only two genders. The Danish foreign ministry advised travellers who use the gender designation “X” on their passport to contact the US embassy before travelling, while Finland cautioned travellers whose gender had changed that they might not gain entry.The recent episodes are all the more striking because they involve countries long allied to the US, although students and academics from India and the Middle East have also been detained in recent days despite holding valid visas. While visitors from many regions have long had difficulty entering the US, immigration officials have traditionally taken a more lenient stance towards travellers from allied nations.Pedro Rios, the director of the American Friends Service Committee, a non-profit group that aids migrants, told AP that it was unprecedented in the 22 years he had worked at the southern border for travellers from western Europe and Canada to be detained with such regularity.“It’s definitely unusual with these cases so close together, and the rationale for detaining these people doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The only reason I see is there is a much more fervent anti-immigrant atmosphere.” More

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      US blocks Canadian access to cross-border library, sparking outcry

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      The US has blocked Canadian access to a library straddling the Canada-US border, drawing criticism from a Quebec town where people have long enjoyed easy entry to the space.The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is located between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. It was built deliberately to straddle the frontier between the two countries – a symbol of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the US.The library’s entrance is on the Vermont side. Previously, Canadian visitors were able to enter using the sidewalk and entrance on the American side but were encouraged to bring documentation, according to the library’s website.Inside, a line of electrical tape demarcates the international boundary. About 60% of the building, including the books, is located in Canada. Upstairs, in the opera house, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.Under the new rules, Canadians will need to go through a formal border crossing before entering the library.“This closure not only compromises Canadian visitors’ access to a historic symbol of cooperation and harmony between the two countries but also weakens the spirit of cross-border collaboration that defines this iconic location,” the town of Stanstead said in a press release on Thursday.US Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to queries posed on Friday.In a statement to Reuters, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the US was responding to drug trafficking.“Drug traffickers and smugglers were exploiting the fact that Canadians could use the US entrance without going through customs. We are ending such exploitation by criminals and protecting Americans,” the statement said.The department provided no evidence of drug trafficking or smuggling and did not immediately respond to a request for additional information.In 2018 a Quebec man named Alexis Vlachos pleaded guilty in a Vermont court to charges relating to a plot to use the library to smuggle backpacks full of handguns into Canada on at least two occasions. He was later sentenced to 51 months in a US prison.Relations between the United States and Canada, longtime allies, have deteriorated since Donald Trump threatened to annex Canada as the 51st state and imposed tariffs.The library is a relic of a time when Americans and Canadians could cross the border with simply a nod and a wave at border agents, residents say. It was the gift of a local family in the early 1900s to serve the nearby Canadian and American communities.A small group of American and Canadian protesters gathered outside on Friday.Peter Welch, a Democratic senator from Vermont, called reports of the closure troubling.“Vermont loves Canada. This shared cultural institution celebrates a partnership between our two nations,” Welch said on X. More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s Tariffs Against Canada Can’t Be About Trade

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      I’ll admit that I was sympathetic to Donald Trump’s heresy on trade, during his first term. His tariffs on China and his bid to renegotiate NAFTA prompted much pearl clutching from economists and pundits, but I knew from my reporting how many people in factory towns across America wanted him to do those things. The renegotiation of NAFTA was, ultimately, a bipartisan success story. It passed overwhelmingly. By the end of his first term, many people — including Democrats — acknowledged quietly that tariffs on China and updating NAFTA were necessary. President Joe Biden didn’t reverse them. He built on them. But now Trump seems to have lost the plot.He is tearing up that deal that he himself created by imposing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, our largest trading partners. What gives?In the case of Mexico, there have been legitimate concerns that China is getting around U.S. tariffs by building or taking over factories in Mexico. That’s one of a few reasons the U.S. trade deficit with China has declined — to $295 billion last year from $418 billion in 2018 — at the same time the trade deficit with Mexico ballooned to $172 billion last year from roughly $78 billion in 2018, according to Census Bureau data.If you worry about chronic trade deficits, as Trump does, that’s a problem. But Trump’s ire at Canada is a mystery. The U.S. trade deficit with Canada is one of the smallest that we have — it was about $19 billion in 2018 and $63 billion last year. Virtually all of it can be explained by U.S. purchases of oil, gas and electricity, a reminder that Canada is critical to U.S. energy security.Without energy, the United States actually runs a trade surplus with Canada. Canada is the top export market for 34 states — or at least it was.Trump’s targeting of Canada has bewildered even his own political allies on trade. “On Canada, he’s just wrong,” one told me. I can’t pretend to understand what goes on in Trump’s brain. But this much is clear: It ain’t about trade.If you listen to his words, Trump is declaring economic war on Canada, our loyal and peaceful neighbor, because he wants to bring it to its knees and take it over as a 51st state. He’s wielding tariffs as a weapon, not to defend American workers, but to execute a hostile takeover of a country. It is a move so bizarre and shocking that nobody can quite believe it is happening.I was in Indiana this week, which is full of factory towns that supported Trump. Canada is the state’s largest trading partner by far. I didn’t met a soul who thinks beating up on Canada is a good idea. More

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      Trump’s Tariffs Could Deal a Blow to Boeing and the Aerospace Industry

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      Aerospace companies are big exporters but also very reliant on a global supply chain, making them vulnerable.Boeing is the kind of manufacturer — one that exports billions of dollars of goods — that President Trump says he wants to protect and nurture.But his tariffs could have the opposite effect on the company’s suppliers.Mr. Trump has imposed a few tariffs so far, but he says more are coming in just a few weeks. That threat has unnerved the aerospace industry, of which Boeing is one of the largest companies. Duties on aluminum and steel, two of the most important raw materials used in aircraft, are expected to raise manufacturing costs. But the industry is far more concerned by tariffs that take effect on goods from Canada and Mexico next month, which could disrupt the highly integrated North American supply chain.“These tariffs are particularly fraught for an industry like aerospace that has been duty-free for decades,” said Bruce Hirsch, a trade policy expert at Capitol Counsel, a lobbying firm in Washington, which has aerospace clients. “Parts are coming from everywhere.”Aerospace experts say the industry is an example of U.S. manufacturing prowess. It offers well-paying jobs and has produced one of the largest trade surpluses of any industry for years. Aerospace is expected to export about $125 billion this year, according to IBISWorld, second only to oil and gas.But the industry is operating under a cloud of uncertainty. Many companies have been able to avoid costly cross-border tariffs under a short-term reprieve for products covered by a North American trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated in his first term. But that deal expires in April.In a letter to administration officials last week, groups representing airlines, plane repair stations, suppliers and manufacturers asked for an exception to the tariffs, arguing that it was needed to keep the industry competitive on the global market.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Dyslexic Comedian Walks Into a Recording Booth …

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      Phil Hanley stood in a womb-like studio, psyching himself up to record the final section of his memoir. Peppermint tea, check. Hands in meditation position, check. Sheaf of highlighted, color coded pages printed in extra large type, check.But when Hanley leaned into the microphone to read from “Spellbound,” his candid account of growing up dyslexic, he sounded more like an anxious student than the seasoned comedian he is.He eked out 13 words, then stumbled, exhaling sharply in triplicate, Lamaze style. He tried again, the same sentence with slightly different intonation. Puff, puff, puff. And again, making it through three more words. Puff, puff, puff. On his fourth attempt, Hanley choked up.It was his 60th hour in the booth at his publisher’s office, not counting practice sessions at home. Most authors are at the studio for a fraction of this time; the average recording length for a 7.5 hour audiobook is 15 hours. But because Hanley has severe dyslexia, the process was protracted. And complicated. And emotional.“The most traumatic moments of my life have been having to read out loud,” Hanley said. “I can’t even express how tiring it is to do the audiobook. It feels like chiseling a marble statue with a screwdriver and a broken hammer.”Nevertheless, he was hellbent on reading his own story. What would it say to the dyslexic community if he handed off the mic?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

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      There was no explanation, no warning. 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. 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 center without the chance to talk to a lawyer.I grew up in Whitehorse, Yukon, a small town in the northernmost part of Canada. I always knew I wanted to do something bigger with my life. I left home early and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I built a career spanning multiple industries – acting in film and television, owning bars and restaurants, flipping condos and managing Airbnbs.In my 30s, I found my true passion working in the health and wellness industry. I was given the opportunity to help launch an American brand of health tonics called Holy! Water – a job that would involve moving to the US.I was granted my trade Nafta work visa, which allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the US in specific professional occupations, on my second attempt. It goes without saying, then, that I have no criminal record. I also love the US and consider myself to be a kind, hard-working person.I started working in California and travelled back and forth between Canada and the US multiple times without any complications – until one day, upon returning to the US, a border officer questioned me about my initial visa denial and subsequent visa approval. He asked why I had gone to the San Diego border the second time to apply. I explained that that was where my lawyer’s offices were, and that he had wanted to accompany me to ensure there were no issues.After a long interrogation, the officer told me it seemed “shady” and that my visa hadn’t been properly processed. He claimed I also couldn’t work for a company in the US that made use of hemp – one of the beverage ingredients. He revoked my visa, and told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the US, I would need to reapply.I was devastated; I had just started building a life in California. I stayed in Canada for the next few months, and was eventually offered a similar position with a different health and wellness brand.I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it. Hours passed, with many confused opinions about my case. The officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I hadn’t been aware I needed to apply that way, but had no problem doing it.Then she said something strange: “You didn’t do anything wrong. You are not in trouble, you are not a criminal.”I remember thinking: Why would she say that? Of course I’m not a criminal!She then told me they had to send me back to Canada. That didn’t concern me; I assumed I would simply book a flight home. But as I sat searching for flights, a man approached me.“Come with me,” he said.There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. 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.”“I don’t understand. What does that mean? For how long?”“I don’t know.”That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”They brought me downstairs for a series of interviews and medical questions, searched my bags and told me I had to get rid of half my belongings because I couldn’t take everything with me.“Take everything with me where?” I asked.A woman asked me for the name of someone they could contact on my behalf. In moments like this, you realize you don’t actually know anyone’s phone number anymore. By some miracle, I had recently memorized my best friend Britt’s number because I had been putting my grocery points on her account.I gave them her phone number.They handed me a mat and a folded-up sheet of aluminum foil.“What is this?”“Your blanket.”“I don’t understand.”I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them, looking like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.View image in fullscreenFor two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no one answered our questions. 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.On the third day, I was finally allowed to make a phone call. I called Britt and told her that I didn’t understand what was happening, that no one would tell me when I was going home, and that she was my only contact.They gave me a stack of paperwork to sign and told me I was being given a five-year ban unless I applied for re-entry through the consulate. The officer also said it didn’t matter whether I signed the papers or not; it was happening regardless.I was so delirious that I just signed. I told them I would pay for my flight home and asked when I could leave.No answer.Then they moved me to another cell – this time with no mat or blanket. I sat on the freezing cement floor for hours. That’s when I realized they were processing me into real jail: the Otay Mesa Detention Center.View image in fullscreenI was told to shower, given a jail uniform, fingerprinted and interviewed. I begged for information.“How long will I be here?”“I don’t know your case,” the man said. “Could be days. Could be weeks. But I’m telling you right now – you need to mentally prepare yourself for months.”Months.I felt like I was going to throw up.I was taken to the nurse’s office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me. She had never seen a Canadian there before. When I told her my story, she grabbed my hand and said: “Do you believe in God?”I told her I had only recently found God, but that I now believed in God more than anything.“I believe God brought you here for a reason,” she said. “I know it feels like your life is in a million pieces, but you will be OK. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help others.”At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept.I felt like I had been sent an angel.I was then placed in a real jail unit – two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet.The best part: there were blankets. After three days without one, I wrapped myself in mine and finally felt some comfort.For the first day, I didn’t leave my cell. I continued fasting, terrified that the food might make me sick. The only available water came from the tap attached to the toilet in our cells or a sink in the common area, neither of which felt safe to drink.Eventually, I forced myself to step out, meet the guards and learn the rules. One of them told me: “No fighting.”“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” I joked. He laughed.I asked if there had ever been a fight here.“In this unit? No,” he said. “No one in this unit has a criminal record.”That’s when I started meeting the other women.That’s when I started hearing their stories.View image in fullscreenAnd that’s when I made a decision: I would never allow myself to feel sorry for my situation again. No matter how hard this was, I had to be grateful. Because every woman I met was in an even more difficult position than mine.There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.If someone is a criminal, I agree they should be taken off the streets. But not one of these women had a criminal record. These women acknowledged that they shouldn’t have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration wasn’t about being held accountable; it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they had been trapped in.The real issue was how long it took to get out of the system, with no clear answers, no timeline and no way to move forward. Once deported, many have no choice but to abandon everything they own because the cost of shipping their belongings back is too high.I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadn’t had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?One woman had a 10-year visa. When it expired, she moved back to her home country, Venezuela. She admitted she had overstayed by one month before leaving. Later, she returned for a vacation and entered the US without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to Los Angeles, she was picked up by Ice and detained. She couldn’t be deported because Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees. She didn’t know when she was getting out.There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her master’s degree and was handed over to Ice due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.There were women who had been picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes. All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months. One woman’s daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release.That night, the pastor invited me to a service she was holding. A girl who spoke English translated for me as the women took turns sharing their prayers – prayers for their sick parents, for the children they hadn’t seen in weeks, for the loved ones they had been torn away from.Then, unexpectedly, they asked if they could pray for me. I was new here, and they wanted to welcome me. They formed a circle around me, took my hands and prayed. I had never felt so much love, energy and compassion from a group of strangers in my life. Everyone was crying.At 3am the next day, I was woken up in my cell.“Pack your bag. You’re leaving.”I jolted upright. “I get to go home?”The officer shrugged. “I don’t know where you’re going.”Of course. No one ever knew anything.I grabbed my things and went downstairs, where 10 other women stood in silence, tears streaming down their faces. But these weren’t happy tears. That was the moment I learned the term “transferred”.For many of these women, detention centers had become a twisted version of home. They had formed bonds, established routines and found slivers of comfort in the friendships they had built. Now, without warning, they were being torn apart and sent somewhere new. Watching them say goodbye, clinging to each other, was gut-wrenching.I had no idea what was waiting for me next. In hindsight, that was probably for the best.Our next stop was Arizona, the San Luis Regional Detention Center. The transfer process lasted 24 hours, a sleepless, grueling 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. We were bound in chains that wrapped tightly around our waists, with our cuffed hands secured to our bodies and shackles restraining our feet, forcing every movement into a slow, clinking struggle.When we arrived at our next destination, we were forced to go through the entire intake process all over again, with medical exams, fingerprinting – and pregnancy tests; they lined us up in a filthy cell, squatting over a communal toilet, holding Dixie cups of urine while the nurse 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. Across the room, one of the women suddenly spotted her husband. They had both been detained and were now seeing each other for the first time in weeks.The look on her face – pure love, relief and longing – was something I’ll never forget.We were beyond exhausted. I felt like I was hallucinating.The guard tossed us each a blanket: “Find a bed.”There were no pillows. The room was ice cold, and one blanket wasn’t enough. Around me, women lay curled into themselves, heads covered, looking like a room full of corpses. This place made the last jail feel like the Four Seasons.I kept telling myself: Do not let this break you.Thirty of us shared one room. We were given one Styrofoam cup for water and one plastic spoon that we had to reuse for every meal. I eventually had to start trying to eat and, sure enough, I got sick. None of the uniforms fit, and everyone had men’s shoes on. The towels they gave us to shower were hand towels. They wouldn’t give us more blankets. The fluorescent lights shined on us 24/7.Everything felt like it was meant to break you. Nothing was explained to us. I wasn’t given a phone call. We were locked in a room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out.I tried to stay calm as every fiber of my being raged towards panic mode. I didn’t know how I would tell Britt where I was. Then, as if sent from God, one of the women showed me a tablet attached to the wall where I could send emails. I only remembered my CEO’s email from memory. I typed out a message, praying he would see it.He responded.Through him, I was able to connect with Britt. She told me that they were working around the clock trying to get me out. But no one had any answers; the system made it next to impossible. I told her about the conditions in this new place, and that was when we decided to go to the media.She started working with a reporter and asked whether I would be able to call her so she could loop him in. The international phone account that Britt had previously tried to set up for me wasn’t working, so one of the other women offered to let me use her phone account to make the call.We were all in this together.With nothing to do in my cell but talk, I made new friends – women who had risked everything for the chance at a better life for themselves and their families.Through them, I learned the harsh reality of seeking asylum. Showing me their physical scars, they explained how they had paid smugglers anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to reach the US border, enduring brutal jungles and horrendous conditions.One woman had been offered asylum in Mexico within two weeks but had been encouraged to keep going to the US. Now, she was stuck, living in a nightmare, separated from her young children for months. She sobbed, telling me how she felt like the worst mother in the world.Many of these women were highly educated and spoke multiple languages. Yet, they had been advised to pretend they didn’t speak English because it would supposedly increase their chances of asylum.Some believed they were being used as examples, as warnings to others not to try to come.Women were starting to panic in this new facility, and knowing I was most likely the first person to get out, they wrote letters and messages for me to send to their families.It felt like we had all been kidnapped, thrown into some sort of sick psychological experiment meant to strip us of every ounce of strength and dignity.We were from different countries, spoke different languages and practiced different religions. Yet, in this place, none of that mattered. Everyone took care of each other. Everyone shared food. Everyone held each other when someone broke down. Everyone fought to keep each other’s hope alive.I got a message from Britt. My story had started to blow up in the media.Almost immediately after, I was told I was being released.My Ice agent, who had never spoken to me, told my lawyer I could have left sooner if I had signed a withdrawal form, and that they hadn’t known I would pay for my own flight home.From the moment I arrived, I begged every officer I saw to let me pay for my own ticket home. Not a single one of them ever spoke to me about my case.To put things into perspective: I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks.Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.A small group of us were transferred back to San Diego at 2 am – one last road trip, once again shackled in chains. I was then taken to the airport, where two officers were waiting for me. The media was there, so the officers snuck me in through a side door, trying to avoid anyone seeing me in restraints. I was beyond grateful that, at the very least, I didn’t have to walk through the airport in chains.To my surprise, the officers escorting me were incredibly kind, and even funny. It was the first time I had laughed in weeks.I asked if I could put my shoelaces back on.“Yes,” one of them said with a grin. “But you better not run.”“Yeah,” the other added. “Or we’ll have to tackle you in the airport. That’ll really make the headlines.”I laughed, then told them I had spent a lot of time observing the guards during my detention and I couldn’t believe how often I saw humans treating other humans with such disregard. “But don’t worry,” I joked. “You two get five stars.”When I finally landed in Canada, my mom and two best friends were waiting for me. So was the media. I spoke to them briefly, numb and delusional from exhaustion.It was surreal listening to my friends recount everything they had done to get me out: working with lawyers, reaching out to the media, making endless calls to detention centers, desperately trying to get through to Ice or anyone who could help. They said the entire system felt rigged, designed to make it nearly impossible for anyone to get out.The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.This is not just my story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people still trapped in a system that profits from their suffering. I am writing in the hope that someone out there – someone with the power to change any of this – can help do something.The strength I witnessed in those women, the love they gave despite their suffering, is what gives me faith. Faith that no matter how flawed the system, how cruel the circumstances, humanity will always shine through.Even in the darkest places, within the most broken systems, humanity persists. Sometimes, it reveals itself in the smallest, most unexpected acts of kindness: a shared meal, a whispered prayer, a hand reaching out in the dark. We are defined by the love we extend, the courage we summon and the truths we are willing to tell. More