This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A woman believed to have been attempting to seek asylum in Canada died of exposure while attempting to cross the US border in a remote part of northern Minnesota, authorities have concluded.



Mavis Otuteye, 57, who is thought to have been from Ghana, died from hypothermia near Noyes, Minnesota, on 26 May, according to a preliminary autopsy.

Her body was found by the Kittson County sheriff’s department and the US Border Patrol less than a kilometer from Emerson, Manitoba.

“Someone died trying to come into Canada to claim asylum,” said Greg Janzen, a local official in Emerson. “It was something at the back our minds we thought would happen, but not at this time of year.”

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Like other remote settlements along the border, Emerson has experienced an upswing of refugee claimants since Donald Trump was elected president.

Seeking to avoid Trump’s immigration crackdown, a growing number of people have braved freezing temperatures and deep snow to reach Canada.

According to figures, 477 people have been intercepted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Manitoba since the new year. But the phenomenon extends across the country: in British Columbia, 233 have been picked up by police and 1,933 in Québec.

Janzen blaimed Otuteye’s death on the Safe Third Country Agreement, which prohibits most people who have already sought asylum in the US from making a refugee claim in Canada.

Critics of the deal say that it forces people who want to seek asylum in Canada to cross the border illegally – usually under the cover of darkness – to increase the likelihood that their claims are processed and approved.

“If we can amend or close this loophole and allow them through these border crossings, we don’t have to have these people coming in at the middle of the night arriving in Emerson,” said Janzen.

Diverting these people to a safe port entry “would ease the situation in the town and make life go back to normal”, he said.

Otuteye is the first presumed asylum seeker known to have died making the journey, but the risks such border crossers faced were underlined by the case of Seidu Mohammed, who lost all his fingers to frostbite during a similar trek to Emerson late last year.

Earlier this month, the Immigration and Refugee Board gave Mohammed the right to stay in the country, reasoning that his return to Ghana would be too dangerous because he is bisexual.

Janzen said that the issue isn’t getting any better in Emerson because Canada’s federal government has failed to take action. Despite warmer spring weather, local authorities have been obliged to call for medical help for at least three migrants in the past three weeks.

“I don’t know what more we can do as a community,” he said. “No matter how many interviews we do and how hard we try to get the point across … the government is not paying attention to this. How many more lives do we have to lose before something changes?”