By Wilson Ring -
The Associated Press
The death of a Mexican immigrant who had just crossed the border from Canada highlights the increase in arrivals across the northern border of the United States despite the risk it poses, especially in the cold and snowy winter months.
On February 19, shortly after 11 p.m., a security camera warned of possible crossings near Holland, a town in the state of Vermont.
Responding agents located three men along a road, half a mile from the border.
Two individuals cross the border in the sector of Vermont, New Hampshire and New York in January.
United States Border Patrol Swanton sector via AP
Two escaped by turning, but the third collapsed.
He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Although the cause of death has not been released, Vermont State Police said she is not considered a murder suspect.
The number of people who cross the northern border illegally is minuscule compared to those who arrive in the same way from Mexico.
However, the death of this migrant is the first in a long time on this side of the United States.
Border agents from both countries have warned about the dangers faced by those who cross, as well as the people who make up the rescue teams, mainly due to the harsh weather conditions of these dates.
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Last year, a family of four Indians died in Manitoba, near the Canadian border with Minnesota and North Dakota.
In December, a 44-year-old Haitian citizen who had been trying to enter the United States illegally from Canada was found dead in a wooded area near St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec.
In April 2019, a Dominican also lost his life in Canada, not far from Champlain, in New York state.
“As we move deeper into the winter and continue to address the continued pace of illicit cross-border smuggling, the level of concern for the lives and well-being of our Border Patrol agents and those we encounter - particularly the populations vulnerable - continues to increase," Chief Agent Robert Garcia said in a statement this month before the migrant's death in Vermont.
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The spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Tasha Adams, indicated that agents from that country have participated in at least three search and rescue operations in January, including the one on the weekend of the day 28, when the family of a person trying to cross into the United States called Canadian authorities from the US to report that they had lost contact with him in an area north of the border.
Rescue teams found the man in Mansonville, Quebec, a short distance west of the Derby Line, after tracking him for about 90 minutes through deep snow.
He was conscious but was suffering from hypothermia and frostbite.
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“These are situations that put our officers at risk due to the weather and the terrain they travel to locate these individuals in distress,” Adams said in an email.
Statistics from the Customs and Border Protection agency show that in the sector that includes New Hampshire, Vermont and New York, 1,513 people were arrested for crossing the border illegally between October 1, 2022 and January 31, 2023, in front of to 160 in the same period of the previous year.
The number of migrants intercepted along the entire northern border this fiscal year, a total of 2,227, pales even in comparison to the number of those arrested on the US-Mexico border in the same period, more than 760,000.
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According to Vermont border crossing court documents, many people arrive legally in Canada, where they pay to be taken to the US border.
Once they cross, they meet other people who transport them in the country.
At approximately the same time and a short distance from where the border agents detected the Mexican and the two other men, they stopped a vehicle with a Connecticut license plate, whose passenger was arrested and charged with people smuggling.
The woman herself said that she had been paid $600 to pick up people.