The number of asylum seekers stranded at the border after trying to reach Canada has overwhelmed the resources of volunteers who used to hand out snacks and warm clothing at the end of Roxham Road. Photo: Elizabeth Hewitt
Dec 30, 2020 When Canada and the U.S. restricted travel across the border this spring, Canada also began turning back asylum seekers who tried to cross from the United States into Canada on foot, many of them at a dead-end road in northern Clinton County.
Yesterday, NCPR reported that some of those asylum-seekers Canadian police have returned to US border officers have ended up in U.S. immigration detention facilities, and even deported to the country they were fleeing. Those border agents have chosen to release others.
A woman looks back before stepping into Canada at Roxham Road, back in 2017. File photo: Zach Hirsch
Dec 29, 2020 Earlier this year, a man from Tanzania tried to seek asylum in Canada by crossing the border at Roxham Road. However, unlike thousands of others who had crossed in previous years, he was turned back to the US under new pandemic-related border restrictions.
Canadian police gave him a piece of paper saying to come back when the border reopened, but returned him to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who detained him over lack of authorization to be in the United States. He was transferred to the federal immigration detention facility in Batavia, near Buffalo, when he reached Jennifer Connor, executive director of Justice for Migrant Families in Buffalo.