With just a thumb, refugees take hold of their future
WINNIPEG, Manitoba — There are many differences between the two Ghanaian refugees in Winnipeg, but the most significant comes down to a single thumb.
Razak Iyal and Seidu Mohammed became the public face of desperation among refugees in the United States after President Donald Trump’s election. A trucker found them half- frozen north of the Canadian border on Christmas Eve. They had walked — sometimes waist deep in snow — across farm fields to avoid being deported from the United States. Their fingers were so severely frostbitten that all of them had to be amputated — with the exception of Iyal’s right thumb.
Both men won permission to stay permanently in Canada.
But while they are rebuilding their lives, their story has become a focus of sympathy and criticism among advocates in Canada, who say their fate shows that the United States is not fair or safe for refugees.
Some advocates argue that Canada should scrap its 13-year-old pact with the United States that requires asylum seekers to demand refuge in the first country of the two in which they arrive. After arriving in one country, refugees are not allowed to enter the other at an official border crossing, which creates a perverse incentive to sneak across the border and then seek asylum.
“We are forcing people to lose fingers and toes, making them go to such lengths to seek our protection,” said Efrat A. Arbel, an assistant law professor at the University of British Columbia.
Others say the story of Iyal and Mohammed is more an example of stupidity mixed with opportunism, pointing out that neither fled their country because of persecution.
Three refugee-supporting organizations, including Amnesty International, have started a legal challenge to Canada’s designation of the United States as a “safe country” for asylum seekers under the pact, the Safe Third Country Agreement.
But Canada’s minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, Ahmed Hussen, says government monitoring reports show the U.S. system remains fair.
And despite fears among residents along the border that the men would be the first of many to be in the same plight, the rush of asylum seekers heading north has slowed with the warming weather.
“We don’t encourage people to come,” Iyal said. “But if you come, please, check the weather before. My life changed totally.”