Detroit woman who mistakenly transfers to the US Canadian Bridge faces deportation

A woman from Guatemala said she and her two U.S.-born children were detained for nearly a week in Detroit’s customs agents, a phone app directed to the nearest Costco, leading them to an international bridge connecting the city to Canada.

Ruby Robinson, a senior attorney for the Michigan Center for Immigration Rights, said she now faces dismissal procedures in immigration court in June.

On Thursday, Robinson, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Michigan’s American Civil Liberties Union called on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to raise greater accountability and transparency for detentions across the country with the northern border of Canada.

“Our neighbors and family shouldn’t disappear because their turn was wrong,” Trab said.

According to Trab, while the northern border has suffered much less immigration than the U.S.-Mexico border, cases of women are not uncommon.

Michigan Democrats said on March 21, the CBP told her that about 213 people have been detained at the same location since January, and more than 90% have mistakenly sailed into the bridge’s toll square.

Trab also said she was told 12 families had been detained in the same building where Robinson customers were detained.

“We don’t know what exactly happened. There is a lack of transparency,” she said, adding that similar detentions may have occurred elsewhere along the 8,891 km northern border.

But Customs and Border Protection said that from January 20 to March 21, more than 200 undocumented people were met at the intersection in Detroit.

A CBP spokesman said about half were detained and handed over to Ice after the secondary treatment was completed.

Michigan Center for Immigration Rights represents Guatemalan women.

Robinson refused to release her name or age, just confirming that she has been in the United States for six years but has no legal status. Her daughter was born in the United States and their father lived in Detroit.

She lives in southwestern Detroit, a community with a large Hispanic population, located in the shadow of Ambassador Bridge, just across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario.

On March 8, the woman and her daughter were in a car driven by her 19-year-old brother. Robinson said in a Zoom call with reporters that she used the phone app to find the nearest Costco and did not realize that the nearest store was located on the Canadian side of the bridge.

They drove to the toll square at the bridge, but did not go beyond the toll station. They were stopped by CBP agents and taken to a nearby building where she was questioned and fingerprinted. She also signed a form saying she entered the United States illegally.

She said the agents told her she would be deported and encouraged her to take her daughter back to Guatemala.

They are fixed in a small windowless room, sleep in a crib, and offer microwaveable food such as ramen and oatmeal. She said they were only allowed to leave the room to use the bathroom and shower.

By Monday night, March 10, her youngest daughter began to have a fever. The woman said the agent told her they did not have the medicine to give to the child. The eldest daughter will cough soon.

While going to the bathroom that Tuesday, the family finally saw her brother in the hallway. The woman said he was trapped. Her brother also has no legal status in the United States and works as a roofer with the child’s father, she said.

On Wednesday night, the girls were handed over to the woman’s sister. She was released the next day.

“When an individual violates immigration laws, their choices put them under detention and dismissal,” Hilton Beckham, assistant commissioner for public affairs, said in a statement. “She admitted to entering the U.S. illegally in 2018. According to policy, the CBP strives to find a suitable guardian for her U.S. citizen children. However, she initially chose to stay in touch with her and extend the detention period. Once the child is placed with the guardian, she is transferred to the ICE.”

Tlaib, who serves on the U.S. House Oversight Committee, said the detention is part of the long-term use of short-term facilities in CBP.

“The erosion of due process is a threat to all of us – regardless of your name, regardless of immigration status,” Trab said. “A wrong turn should not lead to missing and erosion of someone’s due process.”