OTTAWA — When International Criminal Court judge Kimberly Prost goes on vacation, she needs to phone hotels in advance to explain that she can’t pay for a room with a credit card — because she’s been sanctioned by the Trump administration.
Ebooks suddenly vanish from the Winnipeg-born jurist’s devices and she tries to dissuade well-meaning friends from running afoul of U.S. sanction laws by buying things on her behalf. She said it’s all part of an absurd campaign of daily annoyances imposed by Washington since she was sanctioned last August.
But Prost told The Canadian Press she is determined not to stop fighting for international law and the support she hears from individual Canadians has helped her to carry on.
“It just starts to permeate your life, and every day there’s something,” she said. “You’re anxious a lot about what’s going to happen next.”
U.S. President Donald Trump targeted the ICC with sanctions last February, claiming cases before the court involving Americans and Israelis have sought to undermine U.S. national security — an argument the court firmly rejects.
On Aug. 20, the U.S. sanctioned Prost over her work on a case involving American troops in Afghanistan.
Prost said she got a call from ICC staff warning her of the sanctions that morning before she left for work. It didn’t come as a complete surprise; in June, the U.S. issued its first round of sanctions on ICC judges, including two with whom Prost worked with on a case that offended Washington.
“It doesn’t matter how much you prepare, it’s still quite a shock,” she said. “To suddenly find yourself on a list with those implicated in terrorism, in organized crime … it’s a very hard thing to accept, psychologically.”
Immediately after the sanctions were imposed, Prost’s American Express credit card stopped working. She said she received an email a few hours later from Amazon Canada notifying her it had closed her account. Her Alexa virtual assistant device went silent.
Since almost all major credit cards run through American payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard, Prost was forced to sort out recurring payments and subscriptions through other means.
Prost said banks in Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands maintained all of her accounts, but she still comes across unpredictable situations almost daily.
“I have an e-reader. It’s not even an American product, but for some reason — I assume tied to the payment — I’d purchase books, I’d start to read them and then they’d disappear,” she said.
“Some services just carry on and other things just suddenly stop.”
Prost can’t secure hotel reservations with a credit card, or use public transport payment terminals that don’t accept cash. She keeps on her person a letter from the ICC explaining her situation.
“I literally have to talk to the hotels and try to get them to use my debit card, and say I’ll pay at the property,” she said. “You just sort of end up using cash a lot, and trying to appeal to people a fair bit.”
When she goes to the theatre, she buys her ticket in person at the box office. She said she refuses to let friends risk legal penalties by buying a ticket on her behalf.
Prost said the eight ICC judges and three prosecutors regularly share tips on how to navigate daily life under the sanctions. They are determined not to allow the sanctions to undermine their work, she said.
“We continue to assess our cases on the law and the facts and the evidence, and objectively decide. And we will not be influenced or intimidated by these sanctions at all,” she said.
“It is an attack on the independence of the judiciary and attack on the rule of law. They clearly want us to decide cases not on the basis of facts and law, but on the basis of what they think is an acceptable decision.”
While American sanctions are not binding outside the U.S., many non-American companies comply with them in order to avoid legal repercussions in the U.S.
Prost said while Canadian banks told her they needed to cancel her credit cards, they were still “very helpful” in explaining which services they could still provide within legal limits.
She said the Canadian Embassy in The Hague has reached out to help and that it told her Ottawa contacted banks to discuss how they should proceed.
Prost said that quiet approach might end up being more effective than Ottawa using what’s called a “blocking statute” under the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act — which would allow the federal government to bar Canadian businesses from enforcing the U.S. sanctions.
She said that during a “good conversation” with Foreign Minister Anita Anand, the minister told her that she had raised the issue with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“You want everyone around everywhere, and everyone in your government, to be shouting about it,” Prost said. “But there’s a much bigger world out there. So I totally understand the government had to, you know, balance various factors.”
Advocates for international law have accused the Carney government of avoiding direct criticism of Trump in order to keep trade negotiations on track.
Anand has argued she is navigating an unprecedented level of geopolitical tumult.
Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations at the time of Prost’s sanctioning was Bob Rae — who ended up deleting a tweet that called the move a “disgraceful” attack “intended to weaken and intimidate the international legal system.”
Internal messages obtained through access-to-information requests show Rae first reacted to the U.S. sanction on Prost by writing to a colleague, “That is awful.”
“I have tweeted. Enough is enough. We can’t pull our punches any longer,” he added at the time.
Hours later, after his tweet was deleted, Rae wrote, “Getting my wings clipped,” with a sad-face emoji.
Prost said she’s inspired by the number of strangers who have offered her words of encouragement.
“That’s really important when you’re facing something like this, because you can feel really alone,” she said.
“It’s a difficult time, of course, but I’m speaking out because I believe we can make it better. But we have to be aware of what’s going on, and we have to work together to counter that.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 10, 2026.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
