Tales from the trail
Scraps of paper discarded by asylum seekers trekking across the Canadian border tell stories both tragic and mundane — traces of lives uprooted more than once in search of a home
CHAMPLAIN, N.Y.— In the bushes at the end of Roxham Rd., just steps from Canada, lay a sheet of white paper that had been ripped from a notebook and soaked from the previous day’s rain.
It was torn into 11 pieces and tossed away, seemingly moments before its author followed in the steps of the nearly 7,000 others who have sought asylum in Canada so far in 2017 via this hole in the border with the United States.
In handwritten French, it said: “I have come here to live in peace.”
The writer identified herself only as a Muslim woman from the East African country of Djibouti. The intended recipient of her plea was also unnamed, but her audience was clearly Canadian.
She wrote of having moved to the U.S. with her husband and with hope. A victim of genital mutilation at age 7 and now suffering marital problems as a result, she said she was fleeing an abusive marriage as well as a hostile nation.
“President Donald Trump detests Muslims. The people of this country insult us and even spit in our faces,” the note reads. “It’s for this reason that I am coming to your country.”
Composed with care, abandoned in haste, the letter was the most personal piece of detritus recovered during a visit this week to the road that runs from Champlain, N.Y., to the Canadian border.
But it is not the only item testifying to the journey thousands of people have taken to get to Canada since the current migrant spike began in November 2016.
There were airplane boarding passes and luggage tags from Haiti, Ethiopia, Florida, Salt Lake City and New York; Greyhound bus tickets from Albany and Indianapolis; a Delaware driver’s licence and a U.S. social security number; Florida detention records; immigration documents from Orlando; and medical laboratory test records for a Delaware man.
Dampened by rain and dried by sun, the scraps of papers discarded while fleeing for a new life in Canada offer insight into the journeys made by asylum seekers. They may have been thrown away as simple garbage from a life abandoned or been purposefully left behind for fear of complicating an expected refugee claim in Canada.
Canadian officials said this week that there have been about 250 people crossing each day at Roxham Rd. in the past few weeks, with a one-day peak of 500 about a week ago.
About 85 per cent have been Haitian nationals worried the U.S. government intends to get rid of a special immigration designation, known as a Temporary Protected Status, that prevents deportation back to Haiti and nine other countries.
Among them is the Baptiste family — mother Sophonie, father Michel and son Colby — who stepped off a Greyhound bus at 6 p.m. Wednesday along with an elderly grandfather, an aunt and a cousin after deciding to leave behind the life they had built over the past decade in Queens, N.Y.
In Haiti, they ran a successful home renovation business that was abandoned over fears of kidnapping. Colby Baptiste said he was employed by Honda and was a registered real estate agent in New York before the family decided to seek refuge in Canada. Pushing them to take that decision was a letter they received from immigration authorities advising them to prepare for the expiration of their Temporary Protected Status and an eventual return to Haiti.
With tears welling in her eyes, Sophonie Baptiste said she saw Canada as a more generous and open country and was confident her family would be able to rebuild once again.
Colby Baptiste had an expensive camera around his neck and wore a baseball cap pulled low on his head. He looked like any other disoriented tourist arriving in a new town when he got off the bus in the parking lot of a Mountain Mart convenience store in Plattsburgh, N.Y., this week.
He was stoic upon hearing that his family’s first stop in Canada would be a 1,200-person army field camp erected at the nearby Lacolle, Que., border post to handle the wave of refugee claimants. Then he stepped away to negotiate the 30-minute taxi ride to Roxham Rd., settling on a price of $40-per-person and beginning the last leg of the family’s northern journey.
Some of the discarded papers testify to the mundane, everyday existences that have been interrupted: a paper ordering medical tests for one man’s apparent kidney problems; a 2016 report on a vehicle emission test in New Jersey; an employment information form for someone who worked as a chicken de-boner at a poultry farm.
But other documents demonstrate the lengths refugee claimants go to, the risks that they take and the threats they claim to be fleeing. The Star is withholding some information contained in the documents that could identify refugee claimants.
One person threw away a sheet of paper marked “Inmate Summary” that was dated this year. The document outlined five charges an individual was facing for violations of laws in the state of Florida, including possession of forged documents, fraudulent use of another person’s identification and making false statements to obtain a driver’s licence. A trial was pending.
A discarded scrap of newsprint ripped from the weather section of the Dallas Morning News contained fragments of another individual’s story written in black pen in Amharic writing, the language spoken by Ethiopians: “In 92 it was started. In June 2013 he was killed. In 94 I was helping him and in Feb 2015 both my brother and father disappeared.”
The scraps of paper contain pieces of stories that Canadian law enforcement, border agents and immigration officials will also be challenged to document and assess as the refugee claims are being processed on this side of the border.
That process was already underway in the United States for one man, who appears to have tossed his entire 54-page immigration file, contained in a maroon folder, into a wooded area along Roxham Rd.
The man was originally from Haiti, according to a transcript of his December 2016 interview with a U.S. asylum officer.
Speaking through a Haitian Creole interpreter, the man said he travelled from Brazil, where he had been working, through Peru, Ecuador, Co- lombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras to Mexico. From there, he crossed the U.S. border at San Luis, Ariz., in November and made an asylum claim.
He said he was an evangelical Christian and his life was at risk from his half-siblings, who practice voodoo. On one occasion in late 2012 or early 2013, the man said his halfbrother attacked him with a stick and broke his finger because he was preaching the Bible.
Then, after a dispute about whether to give their father a Christian or voodoo funeral, the man said his half-siblings employed a criminal gang to harm him.
“I fear greatly for my life and the safety of my family. I know if we were to return to Haiti we would be tortured and killed. I fear I have no protection there,” the man wrote in his asylum application. However, in an initial interview upon arrival in the United States, the man said he had no fears of persecution.
“My true intentions are to look for a better life,” he said, according to the Department of Homeland Security transcript. He later explained that he had not spoken of the threats to his life because of the stress and shock of being handcuffed and taken into custody at the border.
A U.S. immigration court judge ordered him released from detention several weeks ago after he posted bond.
It’s not clear when the man decided to continue north to Canada or when he tossed his American immigration records into the bush on Roxham Rd. But Canadian officials this week are warning would-be refugee claimants that their tales of persecution and requests for asylum do not mean they will be accepted into Canada.
There is no special protected designation for Haitian migrants in Canada and immigration officials said this week that about half of all Haitian citizens who sought asylum in this country in 2016 were refused.
But that message isn’t getting out to the Haitian diaspora in the United States, said Mathieu Eugène, a Haitian-born New York City councillor who conducted a fact-finding mission to Montreal this week.
“Every time that I’m in the streets, my constituents, the Haitian people, stop me to tell me of their intention to come to Canada,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s because they want to come over here. They would like to stay in the United States. Canada is a great country, but they would like to stay.”