IN UPSTATE NEW YORK, TAXI DRIVERS ARE MAKING A FORTUNE DRIVING DESPERATE REFUGEE CLAIMANTS CLOSE TO THE CANADIAN BORDER. MANY ARE PAYING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FOR A HALF-HOUR RIDE.
‘Bandit’ drivers exploiting flight from crackdown
• When the calls come in to taxi companies in Plattsburgh, N.Y., the person on the other end is never very forthcoming. They need a cab to get some people to the Canadian border, but not the main crossing. Sometimes the fare will be waiting at a motel. Other times it’s the airport or the bus station.
For the passengers, the half-hour ride is the final stage in a traumatic journey. In many cases they have fled homelands ravaged by war — Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen. With an uncertain climate in the United States, they have chosen Canada as a final destination.
But according to Canadian lawyers and American taxi operators, the refugees remain vulnerable to exploitation even after landing in the United States.
Montreal immigration lawyer Stéphane Handfield refers to the smugglers who arrange transport to the border as “bandits,” charging $1,000 a head to drive people from New York City.
And the final leg is usually left to taxi drivers who in some cases will charge another $300 to drop people within walking distance of the border.
Cabbies tell stories of refugees abandoned by the road, kilometres from the border, after they refused to pay an unscrupulous driver an extra sum.
“These people are fleeing, they are ready to do anything to avoid being returned to their countries because they are afraid, and they are charged $300 for a 30-minute ride,” Handfield said.
Statistics from the Canada Border Services Agency show a sharp increase in the number of refugee claimants arriving at Quebec’s land border in recent months.
From Nov. 1 to Jan. 31, there were 1,413 such claims; during the corresponding period a year earlier, there were just 331.
Christian Gaudet, a dispatcher for City Taxi, said in an interview that there has been a “big-time” increase in the number of calls seeking to get to two spots — one in New York and one in Vermont — where it’s easy to walk across the border.
He said City Taxi is a legitimate firm that charges set rates and doesn’t gouge the customers. But he can’t vouch for independent taxi operators or for the “runners” who bring people north to Plattsburgh.
“A lot of them get ripped off, gouged a lot of money by these runners,” he said of the refugees. “People will pay any amount of money to get the freedom they’re looking for, and if there’s any threat of any authority, that scares them too.”
Chris, a driver with Northern Taxi in Plattsburgh who did not want to give his last name, declined to disclose how much he charges but did not contest the $300 figure reported by Handfield.
“I picked up a mother, a father and a baby in the middle of the road up there, because (another taxi driver) wouldn’t take them the rest of the way,” he said.
Chris was headed to the border with a fare of his own, so he stopped to pick them up. He gave the stranded family what he considered a deal, charging $50.
Another Plattsburgh taxi dispatcher who did not want to give his name said passengers are often petrified. “We brought some people up there from Yemen, and he told my driver if they sent him back to his country, they would kill him,” he said.
Some people take advantage of that fear.
“They get them on the highway and say, ‘Look it costs this much.’ They’ll pay it. The driver doesn’t care if they take every penny they have,” he said.
“Some clients explained
PEOPLE WILL PAY ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY TO GET THE FREEDOM THEY’RE LOOKING FOR.
they were taken in hand in the country of origin, and that it cost them about US$10,000 for the voyage,” Handfield said.
“Others explained that there is a network of taxi drivers in the New York City region who ask for US$1,000 per head to bring them within a kilometre of the Canadian border.”
One night in December when he was the immigration lawyer on call for legal aid, Handfield got a call about a man from Eritrea who was making a refugee claim. The RCMP had picked him up at 3 a.m. walking along the highway near the Lacolle border crossing, about 50 kilometres south of Montreal.
“He was wearing running shoes, not dressed for the weather. He was freezing, and he thought he was going to walk to Montreal. If the police hadn’t found him, he would have died,” Handfield said.
Gaudet of City Taxi said that, as of Thursday, he has started refusing calls seeking to get to an illicit border crossing.
“I’m not feeling good about sending cabs to pick people up and drop them off in the middle of nowhere. That’s just not right,” he said. “I can’t have people coming back on me because somebody died in the middle of the woods somewhere. It’s just too sketchy.”