Watch asylum-seekers get arrested at the Canada-U.S. border
A ditch at the end of Roxham Rd. in Champlain, N.Y., has become a hot spot for illegal border crossings into Canada
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A cab on Roxham Road means only one thing.
Car after car unloads group after group, each surreptitiously approaching a sign that reads, “Road closed.”
“This is an international border,” hollers a man standing guard. “You can’t cross. If you cross, you’ll be arrested.”
But it happens day after day at this juncture in Plattsburgh, N.Y., where the land changes from America’s to Canada’s in a patch not much larger than the average sidewalk.
READ MORE: The new underground railroad to Canada
On this Tuesday in March, two men get out of a cab and take their first few steps into Canada with their arms stretched up. One man drops to his knees.
“You can stand up,” an RCMP guard is heard telling him.
Ruby Lavalley, who lives in the last house along Roxham Road, sees these scenes play out 10 or 20 times a day.
“People coming in, running over the border. They tell them to stop,” she says. If they cross they’re going to get arrested. But they just proceed over.”
Lavalley’s sense is that the surge of asylum seekers can be credited to her new president, who has promised to crack down on illegal refugees. They are escaping to Canada to claim refugee status. Illegally crossing is a fast track to getting processed.
Lavalley is astonished that her quiet street has turned into the final steps on the American side of what is now known as the Underground Refugee Railroad.
“[They’re] literally falling just to get on the other side,” she says.
What happens on the other side of this invisible line is also repeated every day. The two men who crossed this morning will be frisked, taken to the legal border crossing just down the way, and then they’ll make their claim for asylum in Canada.
According to the RCMP, 1,134 asylum seekers crossed the Canadian border illegally in January and February of this year. Toronto immigration lawyer Guidy Mamann predicts the numbers will only spike in the coming months.
“We are going to see a steep increase in those numbers,” he says. “What you are seeing right now [is] only those people who want to be seen.
“There are other people who are going further down the fence who do not want to be detected and they’re coming across with the intention of avoiding the system.”
Back in Plattsburgh, yet another group of refugees has made it to the edge of Roxham Road, which ironically is accessed by a road called “North Star.”
A young man and a distraught older couple repeat the words “Canada, Canada.”
The Canadian police tell them they’re safe.