A Haitian family has been allowed in Canada, following nearly two months in an American immigration detention centre after being turned away by Canadian border agents.
The family had tried to reunite with a brother in Canada in mid-July but were denied entry by Canadian border agents who told them they believed their documents were fraudulent.
The two adults and three children, ages two, eight and 12, were handed over to United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and taken to a detention centre for families in Texas, where they were held until this weekend.
Heather Neufeld, the family’s lawyer, says the case is part of a growing trend of Canadian border agents making erroneous decisions that are forcing asylum claimants into the punitive U.S. immigration detention system.
“A wrong decision means someone is sent back to the U.S., to detention in terrible conditions and very likely deportation,” said Neufeld, who is based in Ottawa. She travelled to the Canada-U.S. border in Niagara Falls, Ont., Sunday to help argue the family’s case.
“It’s a completely different environment now.”
Neufeld said the fact that the family was let into the country after CBSA redetermined their case with only a few additions to their documents shows the agency appears to be making more wrong decisions in its push to remove an extra 4,000 people from the country by 2027.
CBC News reported the family’s story last week, while they were still detained in Texas.
The mother, Paulna, had been trying to reunite with her brother, Maxen, who has been in Canada for 12 years and is now a citizen.
They went to the U.S. last summer under a humanitarian program for people from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti. That program was ended by U.S. President Donald Trump in June, which left more than 500,000 people in the country at risk of deportation.
Fearing arrest and deportation to Haiti by ICE, Paulna, her family and her sister, decided to come to Canada where Maxen already lived. Having a relative here meant they could claim asylum.
There has been a significant change in the number of asylum claims since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, specifically at the regular border crossing in Lacolle, Que., according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) data obtained by Radio-Canada and CBC News. The data shows there had already been 557 asylum claims at Lacolle in the first six days of April — just three fewer than in all of January.
CBC News is not publishing surnames of Maxen and his family members because they fear it could jeopardize their immigration case or result in reprisals in Haiti if they are deported.
By the time Maxen arrived to pick up his relatives, CBSA had only allowed the elder sister, who did not want to be identified, to enter Canada and claim asylum. Border agents had taken issue with Paulna’s paperwork due to a middle name on her documents that her siblings didn’t have.
Maxen was told Paulna and her family were already on their way to ICE detention in Texas.
Over the following months, Maxen struggled to get a picture of the family’s conditions in detention.
The family has begun to share details of what happened to them there. He says Edy, Paulna’s husband, was hit by ICE guards at the centre and that the air conditioning was so powerful that they were always cold.
The children appeared pale and slightly dishevelled when he finally saw them Sunday night. The next day, he took them to the hairdresser.
“I love them so much,” he said.
