Far from political quarrels, dozens of migrants of all ages took the Roxham Road on Wednesday, from the United States to Canada, in a choreography (usually) regulated to the millimeter: they get out of a taxi, they cross the border on foot, they are placed under arrest, they ask for asylum.
Wednesday, 4 p.m. Beige minivan lettered ‘Chris’s Shuttle Service’, ‘Canadian border’, ‘Frontier’ comes to a stop in the scorching sun on Roxham Road in Champlain, New York.
The driver opens the rear left door. Two racialized people emerge from the vehicle, then put their feet on the dusty road. On the other side of the border, an officer from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) asks them if they speak French or English. “French,” the man said hesitantly, looking around. The policeman again asks the question: “French? English? “French,” the lady replies clearly after stepping up to him.
“You are at an illegal port of entry into Canada. If you cross here, you will be placed under arrest,” he said, arousing the astonishment of the couple. ” I’m from quebec. […] My husband and I are from Quebec,” she explains.
“Good luck, good luck”
“Chris” had mistakenly assumed that his clients – two black elderly people whom he had difficulty understanding – were planning to cross the border by Roxham Road, at the end of which he assiduously drops off people convinced of finding a better future there than in the States. -United. The RCMP officer then asked the driver of the van to drop off the two Canadians at the Champlain–Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing.
” Good luck, good luck “says the policeman to the passengers and the driver before joining his colleagues inside the temporary post of canvas and white sheet metal planted close to the Canada-US border.
Through the glass door, we can see a woman sitting on a metal chair answering an agent’s questions while hugging her boy dressed in a Spider-Man jacket. Through the thin walls, you can hear a baby sometimes babbling sometimes crying.
A dozen migrants – mostly French-speaking – leave the building, surrounded by posts topped with cameras, to climb into a white minibus with tinted windows which will take them to the metropolis and wait for Immigration Canada to rule on the admissibility of their application for asylum. ‘asylum.