Mexican man who died on U.S. border struggled to pay bills in Canada, family says

The Mexican man who died on February 19 shortly after crossing the border into the United States near Stanstead – in the Eastern Townships region of Quebec – had traveled from Toronto, where he and his family had lived for less than a year.

Jose Leos Cervantes, 45, has struggled to make a living in the capital of Ontario when he decided to try his luck in the US, his wife said in an interview with a Mexican radio station.

The family moved to Toronto in June, hoping for better pay and better working conditions.

But he said Leos Cervantes lost his job two months ago and is struggling to find another to pay the rent over the winter. The couple has three children.

One of Leos Cervantes’ daughters, Yanahi Leos Reyes, posted on Facebook last week about her father’s death, asking for donations so the family could pay for his body to be returned to his hometown of Aguascalientes in central Mexico.

Another daughter wrote: “I will never forget you. You will always be my role model. I love you so much, Dad.”

After struggling in Canada, many tried their luck going south. Others have come to Canada to avoid stricter policies on the US’s southern border.

2nd border death this year

Since October, US border agents have intercepted 1,513 people in the Swanton Sector, a border crossing from the New Hampshire-Maine state line to the western edge of St. Louis. Lawrence County in New York state.

The number is already 42 percent higher than the year ending October 2022, when agents stopped 1,065 people.

Leos Cervantes’ death comes less than two months after Fritznel Richard, a 44-year-old Haitian whose frozen body was found more than a week after trying to cross into the United States on December 23 like Leos Cervantes. , Richard has been struggling to make ends meet in Canada.

The US border patrol agent for the Swanton Sector said 115 people were arrested in one week in February from 12 countries, mostly from Mexico.

“Unfortunately, the dangerous weather did nothing to stop this traffic. Don’t risk it!” they said on Facebook.

Charlie Barnett of Brome, Que., said he has lived near the U.S. border most of his life. The house he lived in for almost 20 years is located about 500 meters from the boundary line.

“In the last year, I’ve probably seen half a dozen people walking down the rails,” heading to the U.S., Barnett said.

The situation is getting worse

Kate Paarlberg-Kvam, who runs a nonprofit in southern Vermont called the Community Asylum Seekers Project, said her group has received calls from U.S. border agents asking if they can help asylum seekers who have recently crossed into the U.S. from Quebec.

“I’m not surprised that this happened because the Biden administration has chosen … to deny people their legal rights. So, of course, they will find another place to cross,” said Paarlberg-Kvam in a telephone interview Thursday.

The US government, under President Joe Biden, has imposed pandemic-era restrictions on migrants crossing from Mexico. Earlier this year, it also announced a policy barring migrants from countries including Venezuela and Haiti from seeking asylum in the US, instead paving the way for two-year visas.

But Paarlberg-Kvam said the immigration process in the US is also backwards.

“It looks like the situation for asylum seekers on one side of the border is pretty tough, so it’s forcing people to try on the other side – it’s not always a very good thing when it comes in either direction,” he said.

Vermont police are investigating the death of Leos Cervantes. In a news release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said she grabbed a tree and fell as border agents approached her, a man and another woman she was accompanying in Derby, Vermont, south of Stanstead.

Leos Reyes, his daughter, told the Montreal Journal that she had paid smugglers more than US$3,200 to help her cross. He said his father had asthma and had a sinus infection at the time.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said police arrested Maria Constante-Zamora, 31, an Ecuadorian woman who lives in Connecticut.

Constante-Zamora was charged with “unlawfully attempting to transport three individuals in the United States while knowing or ignoring that they had arrived and entered the United States in violation of the law.”