A young French woman who was visiting her mother in western Canada spent two weeks in a US detention center after inadvertently crossing the border while jogging along the beach, a report said Friday.

Cedella Roman, 19, ran across the border just south of the town of White Rock in Canada's British Columbia, into the US state of Washington on the evening of May 21, she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

She headed back when the tide began to come in, going up toward a dirt path before stopping to take a photo of the stunning scenery, then turned around to retrace her steps.

It was then that she was apprehended by two US Border Patrol officers who told her she had crossed illegally and had been caught on camera.

"I told him I had not done it on purpose, and that I didn't understand what was happening," she told CBC.