For migrants, Canada is a freezing walk away

In sub-zero temperatures, migrants are risking frostbite to walk in the dead of the night to cross the American border

LOSING HOPE IN TRUMP’S AMERICA

ALMOST THREE months after Bashir Yussuf watched Donald Trump win the American presidential election, he made his way to Noyes, Minnesota, where he set off at night into the snow-filled woods and crawled across the unmarked border into Canada.

“I saw what was coming,” said Yussuf, 28, who fled his home in Somalia in 2013 to make a circuitous, five-month voyage to San Diego, where he applied for asylum but was rejected. “I knew Trump was going to deport me.”

After a three-hour walk, much of it through deep drifts, Yussuf arrived in Emerson, a small farming town in sight of the snow-swept border with both North Dakota and Minnesota.

Emerson’s 700 inhabitants have long known “border hoppers,” often offering them lifts to the nearby Canadian Border Services Agency office.

But they have never seen them coming in these numbers.

The morning before Yussuf arrived with another Somali last Sunday night, 19 other Africans had emerged on the Canadian side of the border, cold and hungry after walking much of the night across frozen farm fields. There were too many to fit into the small border office for processing, so the people of the town rushed to open the community hall, where the new arrivals could get warm, doze on sleeping mats and refuel on Nutella sandwiches, tea and coffee.

Noting a worrying trend, Emerson officials convened an emergency meeting Thursday with the police and border agents to figure out a protocol for the next wave of arrivals — which they feared would be soon.

“The farmers are worried about what they’re going to find when the snow melts,” said Greg Janzen, the reeve, or chief elected executive, of the Emersonfranklin municipality.

On Christmas Eve, two Ghanaians were picked up on the roadside north of town, some 10 hours after they had set off into a field near the border, sinking to their waists in snow.

The temperature that morning was reported to be below zero, with windchill making it even worse. The men’s hands were so badly frostbitten that they lost almost all their fingers.

Over the past couple of years, a small number of people have been sneaking across the border at Manitoba from the United States and then filing for asylum, Canadian Border Service Agency statistics show. But since the fall, refugee workers in Winnipeg say, there has been a noticeable surge.

The Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, known locally as Welcome Place, typically serves 50 to 60 asylum seekers per year, said its executive director, Rita Chahal. “Since April, we’ve seen already 300,” she said.

A loophole in the rules covering asylum seekers has led some to walk for as long as eight hours in the middle of the night, through wintry landscapes and biting prairie cold, before arriving to Emerson. While an agreement between Canada and the US makes it impossible for them to simply present themselves at the border and claim asylum, those who make it into the country and then present themselves to border guards can do so.

Now, in light of the uncertainty and disruption created by Trump’s executive order on immigration, refugee advocates and human rights groups in Canada are demanding that the government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suspend or cancel the refugee pact, which is known as the Safe Third Country agreement.

“We are essentially encouraging people to come across the border through irregular means,” said Sean Rehaag, a York University law professor who specialises in refugee and immigration law.

“When Canada sends someone back to the US, we are saying we have confidence the US is going to protect them if they need protection. We don’t see how we can have confidence to say that in the current context,” said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council For Refugees, a nonprofit umbrella organisation of 170 refugee advocacy groups.

The long walk

From Emerson, the refugee applicants typically take cabs for the 70-mile trip to the provincial capital of Winnipeg, where they formally apply for asylum, welfare checks and legal aid. The hearings are usually scheduled within two to three months of their application, but there are no guarantees. In 2015 the Immigration and Refugee Board approved 57.7 percent of the 16,521 refugee claims made inside Canada’s borders. The quasi-judicial board does not track how many claims come from people who bypassed border controls to enter Canada.

With the legal status of Trump’s executive order still in limbo, Canada’s government has shown no enthusiasm for suspending its agreement with Washington.

On Friday, Camielle Edwards, a spokeswoman for Ahmed Hussen, the immigration minister, said the agreement “remains an important tool for Canada and the US to work together on the orderly handling of refugee claims made in our countries.”

Yussuf was prepared for his journey to Emerson. He wore thermal underwear and thick gloves. And he paid a guide $600 to take him close to the border.

Other asylum seekers said that they had heard from cabdrivers in Grand Forks, North Dakota, that they would be deported at the border.

The drivers offered to drive them to a place that was better for crossing illegally, but farther from the border.

They were unprepared for the wintry crossing.

One man, Zurekaneni Issah Adams, wore a thin jean jacket and carpentry gloves. His trip took seven hours.

“We were lucky. We were saved by God,” said Adams, 36, who fled Ghana in 2014 for Brazil, before slowing making his way by foot, bus and boat to the California border. After 16 months in detention, Adams said, his asylum request there was rejected. In Canada, he had a hearing scheduled last week, but it was postponed. “I am dreaming big,” he said. “I will not lose my hope.” NYT