The Mexican man who died Feb. 19 shortly after crossing the border into the United States near Stanstead — in the Eastern Townships region of Quebec — had travelled from Toronto, where he and his family had been living for less than a year.
Jose Leos Cervantes, 45, had been struggling to make a living in the Ontario capital when he decided to try his luck in the U.S., his wife said in an interview with a Mexican radio station.
The family moved to Toronto in June, hoping to get better pay and better work conditions.
But she said Leos Cervantes lost his job two months ago and struggled to find another that could pay for their rent over the winter months. The couple have three children.
One of Leos Cervantes’s daughters, Yanahi Leos Reyes, posted on Facebook last week about her father’s death, asking for donations so the family could pay to have his body repatriated to their home city of Aguascalientes in central Mexico.
Another daughter wrote: “I’ll never forget you. You were always my role model. I love you so much, Dad.”
After struggling in Canada, many have tried their luck heading south. Others have come to Canada to avoid stricter policies at the U.S. southern border.
Jose Leos Cervantes, a 45-year-old Mexican man who died after crossing through the Swanton Sector, had three children and had been living in Toronto. (Facebook)
2nd border death this year
Since October, U.S. border agents have intercepted 1,513 people in the Swanton Sector, a stretch of the border from the New Hampshire-Maine state line to the western edge of St. Lawrence County in New York state.
That number is already 42 per cent higher than the year ending October 2022, during which agents stopped 1,065 people.
Leos Cervantes’s death occurred less than two months after that of Fritznel Richard, a 44-year-old Haitian man whose frozen body was found more than a week after he attempted to cross by foot into the United States on Dec. 23. Like Leos Cervantes, Richard had struggled to make ends meet in Canada.
U.S. border patrol agents for the Swanton Sector said recently the 115 people they apprehended over one week in February were from 12 different countries, mostly from Mexico.
“Unfortunately, perilous weather has done nothing to deter this traffic. Don’t risk it!” they said on Facebook.
The U.S. border agents who patrol the Swanton Sector recently warned against attempted crossings because of the frigid temperatures. (Wilson Ring/The Associated Press)
Charlie Barnett of Brome, Que., says he’s lived near the U.S. border most of his life. The house he’s lived in for nearly 20 years sits about 500 metres from the borderline.
“In the past year, I’ve probably seen half a dozen people walking down the railroad tracks,” heading into the U.S., Barnett said.
Worsening conditions
Kate Paarlberg-Kvam, who runs a non-profit in southern Vermont called Community Asylum Seekers Project, said her group has been receiving calls from U.S. border agents asking if it could help asylum seekers who recently crossed into the U.S. from Quebec.
“I’m not surprised that it’s happening because the Biden administration has chosen to … deny people their legal rights. So, of course, they’re going to find another place to cross,” Paarlberg-Kvam said in a phone interview Thursday.
The U.S. government, under President Joe Biden, has prolonged pandemic-era restrictions on migrants crossing from Mexico. Earlier this year, it also announced a policy preventing migrants from countries including Venezuela and Haiti from claiming asylum in the U.S., instead opening avenues for them to apply for two-year visas.
But Paarlberg-Kvam says immigration processes in the U.S. are backlogged, too.
“It sounds like conditions for asylum seekers on both sides of the border are pretty crappy, so it is pushing people to try on the other side — with not necessarily wonderful things happening upon arrival in either direction,” they said.
Vermont police are investigating Leos Cervantes’s death. In a news release, U.S. Attorney’s Office said he had been clutching a tree and collapsed as border agents approached him, another man and a woman he was with in Derby, Vermont, just south of Stanstead.
Leos Reyes, his daughter, told the Journal de Montréal he had paid a smuggler more than $3,200 US to help get him across. She said her father suffered from 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 living in Connecticut.
Constante-Zamora has been charged “with unlawfully attempting to transport three individuals within the United States while knowing or recklessly disregarding that the individuals had come to and entered the United States in violation of the law.”
Demands for government intervention in Air Canada labour talks could negatively affect airline competition in Canada, the CEO of travel company Transat AT Inc. said.
“The extension of such an extraordinary intervention to Air Canada would be an undeniable competitive advantage to the detriment of other Canadian airlines,” Annick Guérard told analysts on an earnings conference call on Thursday.
“The time and urgency is now. It is time to restore healthy competition in Canada,” she added.
Air Canada has asked the federal government to be ready to intervene and request arbitration as early as this weekend to avoid disruptions.
Comments on the potential Air Canada pilot strike or lock out came as Transat reported third-quarter financial results.
Guérard recalled Transat’s labour negotiations with its flight attendants earlier this year, which the company said it handled without asking for government intervention.
The airline’s 2,100 flight attendants voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate and twice rejected tentative deals before approving a new collective agreement in late February.
As the collective agreement for Air Transat pilots ends in June next year, Guérard anticipates similar pressure to increase overall wages as seen in Air Canada’s negotiations, but reckons it will come out “as a win, win, win deal.”
“The pilots are preparing on their side, we are preparing on our side and we’re confident that we’re going to come up with a reasonable deal,” she told analysts when asked about the upcoming negotiations.
The parent company of Air Transat reported it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31. The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
It attributed reduced revenues to lower airline unit revenues, competition, industry-wide overcapacity and economic uncertainty.
Air Transat is also among the airlines facing challenges related to the recall of Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines for inspection and repair.
The recall has so far grounded six aircraft, Guérard said on the call.
“We have agreed to financial compensation for grounded aircraft during the 2023-2024 period,” she said. “Alongside this financial compensation, Pratt & Whitney will provide us with two additional spare engines, which we intend to monetize through a sell and lease back transaction.”
Looking ahead, the CEO said she expects consumer demand to remain somewhat uncertain amid high interest rates.
“We are currently seeing ongoing pricing pressure extending into the winter season,” she added. Air Transat is not planning on adding additional aircraft next year but anticipates stability.
“(2025) for us will be much more stable than 2024 in terms of fleet movements and operation, and this will definitely have a positive effect on cost and customer satisfaction as well,” the CEO told analysts.
“We are more and more moving away from all the disruption that we had to go through early in 2024,” she added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
