‘Don’t come’: Canadian in Texas warns others after ICE detainment

Her release from immigration detention in Texas isn’t the end of the ordeal for a former Penticton woman.

Tania Warner is back home with an ankle monitor after she and her daughter were held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than two weeks in what she called “horrific” conditions.

As she waits to plead her case to stay in the country where she has lived for five years, Warner has a warning to other Canadians: stay away.

“Lay low for a while. Don’t come to the US if you don’t need to. If it’s not an emergency, don’t travel across the border,” she said.

Warner said her immigration paperwork was up to date when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took her, along with her seven-year-old daughter, to the Ursula detention centre.

They were heading home from a baby shower in another city when they came upon the roadside immigration checkpoint.

They spent 19 days in custody between two different facilities. Upon their release, an electronic monitor was strapped to Warner’s ankle.

Warner said she was terrified throughout that time, but she tried to remain calm for her daughter Ayla, who reluctantly returned to school on April 8.

On the day of their release, Warner posted a video to social media in which Ayla appeared happy to be driving away, carrying two stuffed animals that were taken away while in custody and heading home for a pizza dinner.

“She was excited to go home. That joy was because she was out of jail, it’s not that she was doing well,” Warner said.

American border agents aren’t like Canadians, she said.

“My experience with Canadian authorities is they’re very polite. They just explain your due process, what’s happening and your option,” she said. “But this administration trains officers to threaten and scare you to self-deport, and they absolutely did that.”

She and her daughter moved from Penticton to Texas in 2021, where they now live with Warner’s husband, Edward Warner, a US citizen.

Before her detention, Warner overstayed her visa, but she was already granted an extension by US Citizen and Immigration Services, she said. That didn’t stop border enforcement from taking them.

Now, she and her daughter have to check in with border enforcement on April 16 as part of their conditional release. They’ll have to pass through another checkpoint to get there.

“We have paperwork that basically forces (border patrol) to let us through the checkpoint, but I’m still terrified. I’m worried ICE is using it to entrap us,” she said. “It was so traumatizing, it’s hard to trust them.”

While Warner navigates the immigration process, she’s warning other Canadians to avoid crossing the border even as tourists, who haven’t been immune from confrontations with ICE.