“We would have left before if we had had the money for the bus and the taxi. Mario Lopez is desperate. With his wife and two daughters, aged 7 and 11, they had planned to cross Roxham Road to Canada on Saturday. The announcement that the border was tightening caught them off guard, they who have been on the road for more than a month, like hundreds of other people who wanted to seek asylum on Canadian soil.
On Thursday, they already began to worry, as some details of a new agreement between Ottawa and Washington leaked out. It was only Friday afternoon, when it was already too late, that they learned of the midnight deadline on the night of Friday to Saturday. From that point on, Canada would begin to turn back migrants attempting to pass through Roxham Road — or another irregular route — barring exceptions.
They are now wondering what they need to do to stay in good standing, as their US transit permit expires on April 18. The United States indeed issues this type of visa for a person who is en route and is destined for another country.
No question of returning to Colombia, “not after all the sacrifices we have made”, he explains.
Their journey has indeed taken several painful detours, explains the father, who was a teacher in Colombia. They were stolen in Mexico, “every last penny we had left,” he says. He is uncomfortable. Why does he hesitate to continue his story? “Nobody wants to say that he is economically miserable and that he put his family in danger,” he says.
After crossing the border from Mexico to the United States, they were detained for almost two weeks with other immigrants, then transferred to a shelter in San Antonio, Texas. This is where they got a transit visa.
They were then sent to New York City by bus. Penniless to continue, they decided to find construction work for a few days to pay for a bus fare to Plattsburgh and then a taxi ride to Roxham Road on the American side, a route often used by asylum seekers.
“I received my first pay on Friday. With this pay we would travel to the border,” says Mr. Lopez.
A common story
Walington Mosquera-Hernandez, also a Colombian, is impatiently awaiting news of his daughter, who passed through Roxham after the deadline fell.
Dennis Melissa Mosquera Murillo entered Canada on Saturday afternoon with her partner and their two-year-old daughter when the new protocol had already come into effect. They would, however, qualify under the exceptions to the Safe Third Country Agreement, since they already have family in Canada.
Mr. Mosquera-Hernandez is nevertheless “very worried”, because he has not heard from since Sunday. “I was called to ask me to send proof of identity, then nothing since,” he says.
“It’s the uncertainty that weighs the most,” he sighs, saying he is in solidarity with his compatriots.
He “thanks heaven” for arriving on January 24, after spending eight months in the United States. A former employee of a port in Buenaventura, he was threatened and placed on a government protection list. “I was under escort for four months, then nothing. I was really scared,” he says.
Like Mario Lopez, he says he had to incur a debt on his migratory journey to be able to reach his destination: Canada. “I worked eight months as a slave in the United States before I could complete my journey,” he said over the phone.
The Lopez family comes from the Caqueta region, in Colombia, and the Mosquera, from the Cauca region. These are two areas that the Canadian government recognizes as dangerous: they are, for example, on the list of areas to avoid all travel, “due to the risk of kidnapping and violent crime arising from the presence of illegal armed groups and other criminal organizations”.
Many asylum seekers from Colombia have in recent years been recognized as in need of protection. With 5,435 asylum seekers arriving between official gateways, overwhelmingly via Roxham Road, it was the third-largest country of origin in 2022. Between 2017 and 2022, their cases were accepted at 72%, according to data from the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB).
“If we could have applied for asylum with us, we would have done so. If we could just show up at customs, we would. Please can you tell me what are we supposed to do now? asks Mr. Lopez.