Family found dead trying to reach US faced removal from Canada

Parents and two children found dead in a river near the US-Canada border would be deported, a lawyer told Canadian media.

A family of four who were found dead last week while trying to reach the United States by boat from Canada were told they would be deported to their native Romania, Canadian media have reported as the deadly incident continues to be condemned by human rights activists.

Florin and Cristina Lordache and their two young children – aged two and one – were among eight people found dead in the St. Lawrence River near the US-Canada border on Thursday and Friday.

Police from the Akwesasne Mohawk community, whose land extends into the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario and the US state of New York, said Florin had two of the children’s Canadian passports in his possession.

The Iordaches’ lawyer in Toronto, Peter Ivanyi, told The National Post newspaper that the Roma family arrived in Canada in 2018 and submitted a refugee application that was rejected.

When subsequent immigration requests were also exhausted, Canadian immigration officials told the family to present themselves for deportation at Toronto Pearson International Airport last Friday, Ivanyi said.

“They didn’t tell me they were doing this,” the lawyer told the Canadian newspaper of their decision to try to enter the US irregularly.

“Of course I would have discouraged them from doing such a thing, but they were so desperate that they didn’t have to return their young children to the squalor under which Romania’s Roma live – in terms of housing, no education, no running water, indifference from the police, brutality,” Ivanyi said.

“They were so desperate that they took it upon themselves to embark on this really risky adventure.”

Authorities said last week the bodies were found near a capsized boat belonging to a missing man from the Akwesasne Mohawk community. A second family of four, originally from India, was among the dead.

“It is believed they all attempted to enter the U.S. illegally from Canada,” Akwesasne Mohawk Police Deputy Chief Lee-Ann O’Brien told reporters Friday.

Police said on Saturday that investigations into the exact “circumstances surrounding the deaths” are continuing.

The deadly incident came a week after the US and Canada announced the extension of a border agreement that gives them the authority to deport asylum seekers crossing the country’s shared border at unofficial points of entry.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled the comprehensive border agreement, known as the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), in late March during US President Joe Biden’s first official visit to Canada since taking office.

Since 2004, the STCA has forced asylum seekers to apply for protection in the first country they arrive in – the US or Canada, but not both.

That meant people already in the US couldn’t apply for asylum at an official port of entry into Canada, or vice versa, and border authorities could uniformly return people at official land crossings.

The comprehensive agreement unveiled on March 24 closed a loophole in the STCA that previously allowed asylum seekers who entered Canada at unofficial points along the border to have their protection claims reviewed once they were on Canadian soil.

The White House said the restrictions would be applied “to migrants crossing between ports of entry”.

Rights advocates denounced the decision, saying that applying the STCA to the entire 6,416 km (3,987 mi) land border between the US and Canada would not deter people from crossing, but would only force them to take more dangerous routes. to take.

Amnesty International Canada and other rights groups gather outside Trudeau’s Montreal office on Tuesday afternoon to denounce the extension of the deal.

“Extending the Safe Third Country Agreement will not end irregular crossings,” Amnesty International Canada Secretary General Ketty Nivyabandi said in a statement. a statement last month.

“On the contrary, it will push migrants to try more dangerous crossings to remote areas of Canada and, in some circumstances, force them to rely on smugglers to make the precarious journey.”