Some of the refugees have paid as much as $600 to guides to drive them to unguarded locations along the border. From there, they get out and walk — through waist-deep snow and bitter wind, often at night to avoid detection from government helicopters that sometimes buzz overhead. The night crossing in winter is dangerous; some have lost fingers to frostbite. The night does offer one advantage, though: It’s easier to see the red, blinking lights on the wind turbines on the other side of the border.They serve to guide the refugees into a country that will welcome them.

The world’s latest refugee crisis is unfolding in the unlikeliest of places: Emerson, Manitoba, a town of 671 just across from Minnesota and North Dakota. Since last year, it’s been overwhelmed by refugees fleeing the United States. This is not the image of our country that we grew up with. The light of liberty is supposed to be a statue on Ellis Island, not a wind turbine on the Canadian prairie. Yet last year, Canadian authorities counted 444 refugees coming into their country through Emerson. So far this year, 99 people have shown up there, which would put the influx on a pace to exceed last year’s record count. The first surge came after Donald Trump was elected in November; another came after President Trump announced his travel ban.

Most of these refugees fleeing the United States, and seeking asylum in Canada, are Somalis — who fear the Trump administration will revoke their visas. Similar stories are playing out all along our northern border: In British Columbia, the number of refugee crossings has doubled. In Quebec, it’s tripled. This is a story that has gotten almost no attention in the United States, but has been well-covered in Canada, with the most heartbreaking stories playing out in the frozen fields around Emerson.

Why Emerson, a town notable simply for being the place where U.S. Interstate 29 turns into Manitoba Highway 75? The answer lies a few hours south in Minnesota.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is home to the nation’s largest community of Somali refugees. The actor Barkhad Abdi, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role playing a Somali pirate in the Tom Hanks movie “Captain Phillips,” got his start from a casting call for Somali-Americans in Minneapolis. For those who have given up on the United States — or who fear the United States has given up on them — it’s about a four-hour ride to the border of a country that has makes a point of welcoming refugees.

Under a quirk in U.S.-Canadian agreements, if refugees show up at the border station, they’ll be turned back. However, if they can sneak across the border into Canada and simply present themselves to authorities, the Canadians will let them stay. It’s the Canadian equivalent of what used to be the American policy toward Cuban refugees — if the Coast Guard intercepted them at sea, we’d turn them back, but if they could make it to dry land, we’d let them stay.

So the African refugees make their way north, hiring Uber drivers or taxis to get them close to the border. The Canadian news magazine Maclean’s reports that cab drivers in Grand Forks, North Dakota, now keep an eye peeled for someone who looks African and carries a backpack. The cabbies then assume it’s a refugee — and for $200 offer a ride to the best spots to hike into Canada unnoticed. There is no wall on our northern border, and no fence either.

Some refugees carry cell phones and simply call 911 once they think they’re on the “right” side of the border. Some try to find a highway and flag down traffic. Others go into the town of Emerson and knock on any door they can find. The community’s reeve — akin to a county supervisor — told the Toronto-based National Post: “I had a few people call me saying they were ringing their doorbell and banging their doors. I know one household that let a young family in until the police came.”

The influx of refugees has overwhelmed the small town. The community center has been turned into a refugee shelter, and one recent weekend even that was full —19 African refugees bedded down at the local curling rink until authorities could show up and transport them to the provincial capital of Winnipeg. Sometimes, people in Emerson simply drive the refugees there themselves. Once in Winnipeg, the refugees are assigned a free lawyer, and are taken in by various aid groups while they await an asylum hearing.

One Winnipeg immigration lawyer told The Washington Post his success rate was 80 percent. If you’re a Somali refugee afraid that you might get deported, those probably seem like pretty good odds — and worth the risk of your family braving through the Midwestern snows. Many of the refugees are entire families; some have included babies carried for up to seven hours through the snow. “It’s a new underground railroad,” the lawyer told The Post, invoking the provocative image of how slaves were once spirited out of the American South to freedom. “When I got to Canada, I felt so happy,” one African refugee told Maclean’s. “I escaped from Donald Trump.”

How you feel about all this likely depends on your political perspective. If you’re anti-immigration, you might think “good riddance.” Best that these people leave so we don’t have to deport them. If you’re on the other side, you likely think this is not the America that we grew up believing in. What happened to the America that welcomed the “huddled masses, yearning to be free”? Why are we now driving those huddled masses to the Emerson curling rink? Either way, it’s a story that has local connections, even though Emerson is a long way away from here. Southwest Virginia — mostly Roanoke — has its own Somali community, which began with the arrival of 200 refugees in 2004. By some estimates, over the last 40 years Roanoke has welcomed more than 7,000 refugees of all nationalities.

After courts halted Trump’s travel ban, the Blacksburg Refugee Partnership announced it would help resettle two families of six, one originally from Afghanistan and one originally from Somalia, both of whom have been in refugee camps for years. For them, the Statue of Liberty is a star atop Mill Mountain, not a warning light on a wind turbine in Manitoba.

SOURCE: Roanoke Times