Aracely saw Niagara Calls for the first time at a cold on March while crossed the arc bridge towards Canada with her husband of customary law and two daughters of four and 14 years, fleeing from the immigration stuffs and the sudden deportations that sweep the United States
She said they felt happiness and hope while crossing the bridge, using their cell phones to capture a cloud of fog and sprinkle from the cataracts in the distance on the Niagara river, still covered with ice.
In a yellow envelope, Aracely brought documents that hoped to be the key to opening the doors to Canada for her family: birth certificates that demonstrate her relationship with her brother who is a Canadian citizen.
“We could see Canada, there, ahead and behind us, the United States,” said Aracely, who is originally from El Salvador. “New opportunity, a new life.”
But Canadian border guards sent the family to the United States, where they entered a dark limbo, imprisoned in detention cells at the US port of entrance to the Niagara, New York cataracts, without outdoor breath for almost two weeks. She spoke with CBC News in Buffalo, NY, where she currently stays while waiting for a decision of the immigration authorities.
CBC News only identifies Aracelmente by name because it remains in a precarious situation in the United States.
The management of the Canada Border Services Agency in the case of Aracely and the treatment of the family by the border authorities of the United States is asking renewed questions about the safe agreement of the third country between the two countries.
According to the agreement, refugee claims must be presented in the country where people arrive for the first time. For this reason, Canada rejects most asylum applicants trying to enter from the US. In the border crossings of the Earth, but there are exceptions to this rule. One of them allows people to look for asylum if they have an anchor relative that is, among other categories, a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident or has a claim for accepted refugees.
There has been a significant change in the number of asylum claims since the president of the United States, Donald Trump, assumed the position, specifically at the regular border crossing in Lacolle, which., According to the data of the Border Services Agency of Canada (CBSA) obtained by Radio-Canada and CBC News. The data show that there had already been 557 asylum claims in Lacolle in the first six days of April, only three less than in January.
‘It’s not a safe situation’
The United States is the only place considered a “third safe country” in Canada. But some US legislators say it is no longer safe for immigrants under President Donald Trump.
“The Trump administration has basically finished asylum in the United States,” said representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat and member of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee.
“It is not a safe situation.”
Aracely and her husband of customary law lived undocumented for several years in the United States, decided to join the family in Canada to escape the threat raised by the hard line immigration policies of the Trump administration.
“We were living with fear,” he said.
Therefore, they risked to expose themselves to the United States immigration authorities when trying to make a refugee claim in Canada.
However, the joy that the family felt on March 17 at the Canadian port of entry in the Niagara cataracts, Ontario, slowly became fear when an official of the Canadian edge services agency (CBSA) began reviewing Aracely’s documents.
She said the official seized the slight differences with the names of her parents in the documents: Aracely’s birth certificate listed her father with a last name, but in her brother’s document, he appeared with two surnames. While his mother’s two surnames coincided in both records, there were variations in his first name, although each began with the same letter.
“They told me that the documents I presented did not convince them. I told them: ‘I have a brother in Canada and we can call it right now,” said Aracely.
“But nothing could convince them not to deport us.”
She said that the border officials gave their backpacks to the family and took them back through the rainbow bridge. Customs and border protection of the United States (CBP) placed them in a detention cell with cribs, a sofa and a television, where they said they stayed for three days. If they needed to use the bathroom, he said, they would have to hit the door to be escorted to the facilities.
Then they were transferred to a cell without windows with four and a half -wall that hid the toilet and the sink at one end of the room. Aracely said she and her husband would wait until her daughters fell asleep before allowing him to cry.
“But we got strength from our children. We didn’t want them to see us like this. We tried to be strong for them,” he said while drawing diagrams of the two cells in a notebook.
‘Random and cruelty’
Family arrest is a new and worrying trend along the northern border, according to defenders based on us.
Jennifer Connor, Executive Director of Justice for migrant families, in Buffalo, NY, said she received reports from children and families held for days and weeks in the entrance ports in Detroit, Buffalo and Champlain, NY, located near the Quebec border. This is something she rarely says, if ever, it happened along the northern border, to Trump’s second mandate.
“There are children young enough to be in diapers and who are being locked up,” he said, adding that it may be difficult to locate the people who have been arrested in the entrance ports because the regulations are not clear.
“That element of randomness and cruelty really increased,” said Connor. “There is no system to find people in an entrance port.”
According to a document that describes the agency standards provided to CBC News by CBP, “detainees generally should not be maintained for more than 72 hours in CBP rooms or retention facilities.”
The document said that “everything possible to keep the detainees for the least amount of time.” In some cases, he pointed out that people remain longer if there is no space available in detention centers.
Frozen sandwiches and a camp shower
Aracely said the days inside the cell were long and difficult. They would be fed with frozen chicken sandwiches defrosted by CBP officers in a microwave. Sometimes, he said, the meat would still freeze in its center, so they ate around the edges. The water would come in a jug and sometimes drank from the sink.
They had no access to showers’ facilities, but Aracely said they were provided with a camping shower bag and each person had to wear a water bag.
She said they left the cell together three times during their imprisonment of two weeks to walk in a corridor lined with windows.
“You could see the Canadian side, the Canadian flag,” he said.
His four -year -old son would get excited during these exits, which allowed him to run and play with a ball. Aracely said she was the focus of her attention during her arrest, and that her 14 -year -old son did everything possible to keep her brother busy, even when the teenager turned in and became more thoughtful.
At the request of the girl, sometimes they play hidden in the cell, wrapping in blankets made of material that reminded Aracely the covers thrown over horses in El Salvador.
A thread of hope
Then, on March 28, they received the news that CBSA officials would meet them again. His family had been a frantic work behind the scene to authenticate his records and request the help of a Canadian lawyer and advocate both sides of the border.
“We crossed the bridge again. We were feeling joy,” Aracely said. “We were feeling certain.”
But any hope that had soon faded. CBSA officials again told the family that they did not trust their documents. Aracely said everything happened very quickly.
“They told us that we had to be immediately deported to the United States, which had been very generous by entertaining our case for the second time,” he said.
A CBSA official told them that it would be better if they were sent back to El Salvador, he said.
“[He] He said that the United States would deport us back to El Salvador anyway. “
The family returned to the cell in the Niagara Falls, New York, the port of entrance.
“I don’t think it’s something that Canada is complicit, returning children to such conditions,” said Heather Neufeld, a family -based lawyer from the family.
She said that CBSA’s officers had the option of calling Aracely’s brother, the relative host and interviewing him, but decided not to do it.
“I had never seen a determination before it was so Nitpicky in the discrepancies,” he said.
“He [CBSA] Border officials did not take the time to think of how things work in El Salvador, the fact that documents do not always see the same as in Canada. “
The lawyer seeks a judicial review of CBSA’s decision
Neufeld has requested a judicial review of CBSA’s rejection before the Federal Court, but the case refers to a marked clock in the United States
On April 1, a CBP officer came to tell them that Aracely’s husband was being taken to a detention center in Batavia, New York, before a deportation audience scheduled for May. The family received three minutes to say goodbye.
Currently, Aracely lives in a shelter in Buffalo with his daughters, and must register weekly with immigration authorities. Your deportation audience is scheduled for Christmas Eve.
“We have fled from El Salvador, and then we have fled from here, from this uncertainty, to Canada,” he said.
“Now, our family is separated, just because they [CBSA] It would not believe us. It seems really unfair. But we trust God and soon, we will overcome this process. Everything will come to the light we were telling the truth. “
In a statement, CBSA said that any person rejected from Canada under the safe agreement of the third country enters “customs care and border protection of the United States.”
