Teen-Aged Jogger Detained For 2 Weeks After Accidentally Crossing U.S. Border from Canada

A young woman jogging along a beach in British Columbia accidentally crossed the U.S. border from Canada, and ended up being detained for over two weeks by the U.S. Border Agency.

Cedella Roman, 19, was visiting her mother from France when she went jogging last month just south of White Rock, British Columbia. She mistakenly continued jogging into Blaine, Washington, she told CBC.

As Roman 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 stopped 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."

Roman said she didn't see any signs warning that she was crossing into the U.S. during her jog. She was informed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers that she had entered the country illegally, which they said was captured via security cameras.

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 jewellery, they searched me everywhere.”

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. After 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.

"It's like a trap ... anybody can be caught at the border like this," Ferne told CBC.

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 British Columbia, Canada.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that anyone who enters the U.S. outside an official port of entry and without inspection has crossed the border illegally and will be processed accordingly.

"This applies regardless of whether or not the individual claims to have inadvertently crossed the border," said the department in a statement.

One report said that due to Roman’s illegal entry into the U.S. she has been banned for life from entering into the country again.

The Canada-U.S. border is 8,891 km-long and is the longest in the world, but it isn’t marked in the traditional way with fences due to the historic nature of the relationship between the two countries.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 26, 2018 07:40 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).