border visit 26 February 2023

A cold sunny day at the border. We arrived at about 3.45 pm at Roxham.

At 4 pm the first taxi arrived bringing three young Tamil men from Sri Lanka. They spoke little English but happily took gloves, hats and scarves. They had hardly any belongings with them. The three crossed into Canada without incident. The taxi driver told us he had not picked them up at the bus station and that the 3pm bus had been delayed for an hour, probably because of the snow.

At about 4.30 a second taxi brought the first three passengers from the bus: a young man from Afghanistan, a woman from Columbia in her late 20’s and a man in his 40s from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A few minutes later two taxis arrived at the same time. The first one brought a large Syrian family: mother, father, a baby in a carrying seat, a two year old girl and two twin girls aged about 9-10 years. They had a lot of luggage but it consisted not of large suitcases but a considerable number of smaller improvised bags. It looked as though they had been traveling for a long time. The twin girls were very dynamic. They insisted on getting mitts and hats for the baby and toddler first. Then they accepted some for themselves. They were very diligent helping their father carry all the luggage to the edge of the border and after crossing they were ferrying the luggage back and forth into the RCMP building. All the while the mother was taking care of the baby and toddler. They crossed easily into Canada. I don’t think they understood what the RCMP officer told them.

The other taxi brought a family from Venezuela - a mother, a 7 year old girl and a young man. The mother was pregnant and smiled broadly when we congratulated her. They too entered Canada without incident.

We decided to leave about 5 pm. As we drove along Roxham, a black SUV passed us by. Approaching the junction with North Star road we saw another  SUV drop off a group of people at the corner. They began walking down Roxham in our direction. We stopped and offered them warm things but they were too intent on walking to the border to stop. They were not dressed warmly and we were concerned for their safety as it was getting much colder and the walk to Roxham would take about 15 minutes. We turned around to return to the border. As we did the black SUV we had passed earlier came towards us. We stopped it and asked the driver if he was a taxi. He said he was an Uber driver. We asked him as a special favor to pick up the family and drive them to the border. He agreed and we met them when they arrived. At that point they were happy to accept warm things. They were a Persian speaking family from Iran with minimal luggage carried in backpacks: mother, father, baby, teenage boy and three younger children. The parents looked exhausted. They too crossed over safely.

In total we saw 19 people: three women, seven men and 9 children/teens.