Two more bodies found at US-Canada border, toll 8

Toronto, April 1

The police have said they recovered the bodies of two more migrants who drowned in the St Lawrence river while attempting to enter the US from Canada illegally, taking the death toll to eight, including members of an Indian family.

The bodies were found on Friday in a marsh on the riverbank near Akwesasne, a community which straddles Quebec, Ontario and New York state. One other person is still missing.

The police say the deceased — believed to be two families of Indian and Romanian descent — were trying to cross into the United States from Canada. Among them were two children under the age of three, both Canadian citizens.

“We’ve seen it happen in the past, and hopefully as we move forward … it’s something we can one day eliminate,” said Akwesasne Mohawk Police chief Shawn Dulude.

The Akwesasne police are working with Immigration Canada to assist with identifying the victims and notifying the next of kin. They are also increasing surveillance on the river, it said.

Authorities located the first body in the marsh around 5 p.m. on Thursday during an aerial search conducted at the request of the Canadian Coast Guard.

Throughout the day on Friday, search crews could be seen wading through a marshy area near the local marina with the help of a light airboat. A helicopter also scanned the river.

The last two bodies, of a second infant and another woman, were retrieved from the water during the day.

The police recovered two more bodies from the river on Friday, after discovering six bodies and an overturned boat during a missing person search on Thursday afternoon, a news portal reported.

They are believed to have been an Indian family and a Romanian family who were attempting to cross into the US, the police said, adding an Akwesasne resident remained missing.

According to the police, there has seen an uptick in human smuggling into the US Ryan Brissette, a public affairs officer with US Customs and Border Patrol, says the agency has seen a “massive uptick in encounters and apprehensions” at the border.

The agency saw more than eight times as many people try to cross from Canada into the US in 2022 compared to previous years, he said. Many of them — more than 64,000 — came through Quebec or Ontario into New York.

“Comparing this area in the past, this is a significant number,” Brissette said.

“There’s a lot of different reasons as to why this is happening, why people are coming all of a sudden through the northern border. I think a lot of them think it’s easier, an easy opportunity and they just don’t know the danger that it poses, especially in the winter months,” the officer said. — PTI

48 incidents of illegal crossing since Jan

• The Akwesasne police say there has been 48 incidents of people trying to cross illegally into Canada or into the US through the Mohawk territory since January
• Most of them were of the Indian or Romanian descent
• In January 2022, the bodies of four Indians, including a baby, were found frozen in Manitoba near the Canada-US border
• In April 2022, six Indian nationals were rescued from a sinking boat in the St Regis river, which runs through Akwesasne Mohawk Territory