Seeking To Be Reunified
"Here in the town, he was like a mayor. Everyone knew him and loved him."
"My mom is destroyed. She cannot even talk."
Wilton Reynoso, Vega, Guaraguao, Dominican Republic
"[They led him to believe] it was so easy."
"There were two kilometres they [illegal entrants] had to walk [by themselves]. They [human smugglers] dropped them off and said, 'Go straight'."
"People have to know. He didn't have to die. Nobody had to die."
"He ... didn't know his left or right. He probably couldn't lift his face up anymore, and he just went down, and 30, 40 centimetres of water was enough to drown."
Andrew Burzminski, Toronto
"[Locals] consider the wooded marsh a] no man's land."
"None of us would dare even to take a chance walking through that area. It's very spongy. You get in there, it's almost like a quicksand...."
"It's obvious they didn't have a clue."
Eric Boyse, Hemmingford, Quebec
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| Wilson Reynoso Vega, from the Dominican Republic, paid a smuggler to help him slip into the United States through the Quebec border. He was found dead in marshy woods April 16, 2019. |
He was a young man, an attractive personality, a local celebrity in the farming town of Guaraguao. A singer, the 32-year-old performed under the name Jensen Junior. He had an eleven-year-old daughter whom he missed. His wife had taken the little girl after several years living in the Dominican Republic, to the United States. But Wilson Reynoso Vega, the little girl's father, never forgot his daughter. He kept in touch, they spoke frequently, he posted her photographs on his Facebook page.
He decided he would take a trip to see her, but his application for a tourism visa to the United States had been refused. He succeeded in obtaining a tourist visa to Canada, however. He flew from Santo Domingo to Toronto and paid two smugglers $3,500 for their help in crossing the border illegally. And where they took him was to a notorious area between the province of Quebec and New York State.
It is where a thriving trade in human smuggling has been taking place with Haitians and Nigerians slipping through across the border at illegal crossings with the help of smugglers. Once these migrants cross illegally, the RCMP take them into custody, where they claim asylum as refugees. This starts a process whereby their claims will be assessed and in the meantime, the claimants are fed, housed, and given social assistance through welfare.
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They can end up living in Canada for years before their claims are assessed given a backlog; most to be denied, but the claimants can then seek other avenues of consideration in appealing their rejected claims, and continue extending their stay in Canada for years, and living off social welfare. This young man, Reynoso Vega focused on accessing the U.S. border, going in the opposite direction to the 40,000 that had crossed illegally into Canada.
He ended up being part of a group of about a dozen men, driven to the border by the smugglers, and informed that they should continue on foot across the border from Canada, where someone would then pick them up on the American side. On the night of April 15, the group approached a woodland marsh on the northwestern shore of Lake Champlain. Night temperatures dropped to freezing.
The others in the group noted that Reynoso Vega appeared to become disoriented, and eventually he became separated from the group. All the others, Mexicans, later said something appeared to be awry with his balance and orientation. As the others straggled across the border into New York, they were arrested. And they then reported Reynoso as missing.
The next day his body was discovered, the cause of death determined to have been drowning. The coroner informed Reynoso's Toronto friend Burzminski who identified the body, that Reynoso had been in a hypothermic state for hours before death. He was found with rubber boots on his hands and family members speculate that he was crawling, unable to make any headway in the muck, where police said he had been moving in a circle.
An Ecuadoran man who told police that he had been offered $600 to pick up the people at Rouses Point in New York, has been arrested. Because the impoverished family cannot afford to repatriate Reynoso's body, it remains in Montreal. His mother has been hospitalized, utterly distraught by her loss. Reynoso's daughter will never see her father again.
And another tragedy has played out in a world where dislocation and the human dimension echo forlorn sorrow.
Labels: Canada-U.S. Border, Illegal Entry
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 22, 2019
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