How some migrants escape Trump Extremism in military sparks calls for reforms
UNITED STATES: Cab driver Curtis Seymour got the call at 3.30am to pick up a passenger at the Greyhound bus station in Plattsburgh, New York, about 40km south of the Canadian border.
An older Haitian woman wearing a purple and yellow headwrap, mauve lipstick and big gold earrings descended from the bus with two handbags, a backpack and a suitcase. Seymour placed her luggage in the car, and asked where she was headed.
‘‘Canada,’’ the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Cilotte, said in broken English. ‘‘No police,’’ she added.
Seymour, 62, who has driven the same streets in upstate New York for more than a decade, voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election, partly because of his tough stance on immigration.
‘‘I would vote for him all over again,’’ Seymour said. ‘‘But it’s more complicated than that.’’
Since Trump was elected, Seymour has had a front seat view of the other side of the immigration debate, ferrying some of the roughly 2000 people who have crossed illegally into Canada this year.
Most of those border crossers had been living legally in the US, including people awaiting the outcome of US asylum applications. But Trump’s tough talk on illegal immigration has spurred a wave of asylum seekers to leave for Canada, whose government they view as more welcoming to migrants.
There, they have begun applying for asylum, citing continued fears of persecution or violence in their homelands, including Somalia and Eritrea.
After arriving in border towns such as Plattsburgh, many use cabs to cover the final trip to the Canadian crossing. Seymour said he usually makes the run a few times every week.
Once registered as a Republican but now an independent, Seymour said Trump’s rhetoric made many of his border-bound patrons fearful. He said that while some asylum seekers were a crime risk, most of his passengers would be ‘‘assets to this country’’.
‘‘Trump’s immigration policies are strong. They are one of the reasons why I voted for him. But these people are human beings no matter where they came from,’’ Seymour said.
‘‘It’s not like they’re aliens from another world or something.’’
He also acknowledged he has to make a living.
‘‘Of course I don’t love all my passengers, but I certainly don’t hate any of them,’’ he said.
In the rush to get out of the cab and into Canada, travellers often drop items. The border is strewn with evidence of hurried escapes: a luggage tag, two baby bottles, one mitten, a wheel that fell off a suitcase, a stroller, an empty pack of cigarettes, a packed lunch.
One man from Somalia left behind his US employment authorisation card, which won’t expire until September 2017. It read: ‘‘NOT VALID FOR RE-ENTRY TO THE US.’’
Others abandon belongings too heavy to carry, which Seymour donates to drop-off centres around town.
Passengers who do not speak English, Seymour said, sometimes use different techniques for communication.
‘‘One woman with her child spoke no English whatsoever and just drew me a picture of a fence.’’
Since November, he has joined the cabbies awaiting passengers at the bus station headed to the border, usually working Monday to Saturday, from midnight until 9am. A Reuters reporter accompanied Seymour on three overnight shifts.
As the bus doors swung open on a recent Wednesday morning, the cab doors followed suit, with drivers rushing up to the bus.
‘‘Taxi! Taxi! Taxi!’’ solicited one driver.
‘‘Going to the border? I’ll take you there for real cheap,’’ another yelled.
Seymour opted to lean against his white van and let a passenger, Cilotte, come to him. The bus driver had called him minutes before to tell him to be on the lookout for the woman.
About 10 minutes later on a two-lane highway running north from Plattsburgh, Seymour looked back at Cilotte in his rear-view mirror. ‘‘You’re okay,’’ he said repeatedly.
‘‘When we get there,’’ he told the reporter, ‘‘I help them take their bags out of the car and I stay and watch and make sure they make it.’’
He added, ‘‘I tell them, ‘Don’t stop now.’ But some of them stop. They just stand there. They freeze.’’
Families seeking to cross at the official port of entry in Champlain, New York, are typically charged a flat rate of $60. Those who want to cross more discreetly pay $65 to $75 to be driven to a nearby deadend street surrounded by farmland. They cross a ditch and a small hill, then walk into Canada.
Yesterday, the New York State Attorney General’s office announced it had investigated upstate cab drivers for price gouging asylum seekers. At least one driver from a rival Plattsburgh cab company charged passengers as much as $300 for a trip to the border, prosecutors said. Seymour said he was not charged.
Once they arrive at the border, Seymour said, his passengers understand they will be arrested.
‘‘But that’s what they want,’’ he said. ‘‘As long as they’re detained in Canada, they don’t care.’’
At 4am, Seymour and Cilotte reached the border. The police had their flashlights on.
Seymour helped Cilotte with her bags. ‘‘They won’t hurt you,’’ he said.
‘‘Right now you are in the United States,’’ the Mounties warned. ‘‘If you come any further, you will enter Canada illegally.’’
Again, Seymour told Cilotte, ‘‘You’re okay.’’
One Mountie asked Seymour: ‘‘You encouraging her to cross the border?’’
‘‘No,’’ he said, hands in pockets. ‘‘She’s just scared.’’
‘‘You can leave anytime now,’’ the Mountie responded.
‘‘When I’m ready,’’ Seymour said. ‘‘When she’s ready.’’
– Reuters GERMANY: Germany’s defence minister yesterday promised to reform the military after the arrest of soldiers accused of plotting to carry out an attack motivated by Right-wing extremism, but her pledge failed to quell growing criticism of her leadership.
German police on Wednesday detained a second soldier suspected of involvement in what prosecutors believe was a plan by a military officer and a student, both in custody, to carry out an attack and blame it on migrants.
Ursula von der Leyen, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said it could take months to address what she called ‘‘weak leadership’’ across the military that allowed incidents of extremism, sexual assault and bullying to fester.
But members of the Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in Merkel’s ruling coalition, the Greens and other parties criticised von der Leyen for not taking personal responsibility, despite more than three years on the job as commander of the troops.
‘‘Extreme mistakes were made at a high level,’’ Rainer Arnold, defence spokesman for the SPD, said. He said her comments had created ‘‘an environment of uncertainty and mistrust’’ that were hobbling the military’s response.
He said von der Leyen had failed to tackle problems with the internal leadership structures despite warning signs when a sexual harassment scandal first surfaced last autumn.
Christine Buchholz, a member of the Left party, said the case clearly involved ‘‘a far-Right extremist terror cell’’, and urged von der Leyen not to treat it as an isolated incident.
Merkel has underscored her support for von der Leyen, calling her approach the right one.
Von der Leyen has apologised for her initial anger about the arrest of a 28-year-old officer, who was not dismissed despite writing what she called a ‘‘clearly racist’’ master’s thesis, but said she remained convinced reforms were needed.
‘‘It’s important to me that we don’t lump everything together,’’ she said after a two-hour session of the parliamentary defence panel. ‘‘But we must proceed with all firmness on these specific cases, not just Right-wing extremism ... but also the cases of sexualised violence.’’
Von der Leyen said she planned to improve leadership training and accountability, starting with detailed discussions at the lowest level of the military.
Officials would also revamp the ‘‘Traditionserlass’’, a policy last updated in 1982, which provides guidance for how troops should treat the legacy of the German military, which also co-ordinated a failed attempt to assassinate Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1944.
It now says some German troops were responsible for Nazi atrocities, while others were ‘‘innocently abused’’. – Reuters