Ok. Free legal advice: If you a citizen of country A visiting relatives in country B, don't go anywhere near country C without your passport. US authorities acted very reasonably here. Two weeks is not a long time considering she needed confirmation from multiple countries.
No one stopped me. Thanks be to the Schengen Agreement.
Friends of mine, in the glory days of the 1990s, went canoeing in the Boundary Waters. They went to the Canada side and 'claimed' some island for the US in jest.
They didn't get stopped, much less detained for two weeks.
In the same glory days, people on the Maine/Canada border would frequently pass back and forth without a problem. Eg, to get gas in the US, where it was cheaper.
That's why there are still things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_Free_Library_and_Opera... . Which, you'll notice, allows people from Canada to enter the door on the US side without going through customs.
So it is not unreasonable that there can be flexibility on what it means to cross the border.
Sure, an improper entry adds some complication. But if her story checks out – passport available for review, low signage at the crossing, in jogging wear, video shows no suspicious packages, well-established addresses/education/career – then perhaps 24-48 hours would be reasonable.
I'm not uniquely blaming US border authorities here – if Canada wouldn't take her back within 24 hours, as someone with proper documents who had just previously been there legally, they share the blame in creating an unreasonable system.
They let her contact her mother, who brought her passport. All that was left was for Canada to say she was in Canada legally.
So, Canada does deserve part of the blame. The article says her mother rushed to the detention center with her passport and was told to submit it to Immigration Canada. I have no idea why it took two weeks for officials on both sides to determine she could go back to Canada; but, it sounds like there was some sort of delay on the Canadian side. Of course, neither side will comment on the case.
The Google Map attached to the story, with photos and annotated positions of the beach and nearest border sign, are highly suggestive her explanation was credible, and should have been self-evidently so to agents on the ground.
As w citizen of a country with visa-free travel to the US, the only question of Canada that seems reasonable would be something like: "Let us know if this person is a fugitive; if we don't hear from you in 12 hours, we'll set them free in the U.S." Then she could walk back to Canada at an official crossing with her passport, and Canada could object to that re-entry if necessary.
And because this person is currently in custody, they cannot be released until they know there aren't any outstanding warrants in any of the three countries involved.
But this does not avoid the fact she violated the law. In legal terms, she deliberately crossed the boarder. She didn't knowingly violate the law, but this isn't someone forced across the boarder against their will. "I didn't see the marker" isn't actually an excuse. Someone in the US has to actively decide not to prosecute. That decision too take time, and won't start until such a person's identity and status has already been assured.
There’s no autonomous machinery that will prosecute someone unless it’s turned off. If nobody in the US did anything, then she would have jogged back into Canada and never have been aware that she stepped outside of its boundaries in the first place.
So, no. Action would have been required to prosecute. No action would have meant no prosecution.