Eight people have died, including members of an Indian family, according to Canadian police who claim to have found the bodies of two more migrants who drowned in the St. Lawrence river while trying to enter the US from Canada.
On Friday, the dead bodies were recovered in a marsh by a riverbank close to Akwesasne, near the border of Quebec, Ontario, and New York. One more person is still missing.
According to police, the deceased were attempting to enter the United States from Canada. They are thought to be two families of Indian and Romanian descent. Two of them were under the age of three and were Canadian citizens.
“Unfortunately, these situations happen. It’s not something new,” Akwesasne Mohawk Police chief Shawn Dulude said.
The officer was quoted by the Montreal Gazette as saying, “We’ve seen it happen in the past, and maybe as we move forward… it’s something we can one day eliminate.”
In order to assist with victim identification and contacting the next of kin, Immigration Canada is collaborating with Akwesasne police. Also, it stated, they are stepping up their riverside surveillance. Around 5 p.m. on Thursday, during an airborne search conducted by the Canadian Coast Guard, authorities found the first body in the marsh.
On Friday, search teams were seen wading through a marshy region close to the local marina with the help of a light airboat throughout the day. The river was also scanned by a helicopter. During the day, the bodies of a second infant and a woman were recovered from the water.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday that there are numerous concerns regarding what happened to the two families. He remarked during a news conference that “this is a heartbreaking situation, particularly given the young child that was among them.”
Police report a rise in the number of people being smuggled into the US. US Customs and Border Patrol’s Ryan Brissette, a public affairs officer, said the agency has noticed a “massive uptick in encounters and apprehensions” at the border.
In comparison to prior years, he claimed, the agency witnessed more than eight times as many attempts to enter from Canada into the US in 2022. More than 64,000 of them entered New York via Quebec or Ontario.
According to Akwesasne police, since January there have been 48 instances of people attempting to enter Canada or the United States illegally through Mohawk territory, with the majority of them being of Indian or Romanian heritage.
Four Indians’ bodies, including an infant, were discovered frozen in Manitoba close to the Canadian-American border in January 2022. In April 2022 it was reported that six Indian nationals were rescued from a sinking boat in the St. Regis river, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory.
