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Six bodies found in swamp near Canada’s US border

MONTREAL – The Akwesne Mohawk Police Service said late Thursday that it was investigating the discovery of six bodies in a swamp in Quebec near Canada’s border with New York state. Police said they are awaiting the results of a postmortem and toxicology tests to determine the cause of death.

They said they are still trying to identify the dead and their status in Canada. It was not immediately known if they were migrants trying to cross the border.

“The first body was found around 5 p.m. in a swamp in Aquesasonne, C. Sine, Quebec,” police said in a statement on social media. “There is no threat to the public at this time.”

Last month, the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service and Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Police reported a recent increase in illegal entry through their land and waterways. The statement said some migrants needed to be hospitalized. And in January the force noted that people involved in people smuggling tried to use the shores along the St. Lawrence River in the area.

US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week announced a plan to close a loophole in an immigration deal that allows thousands of asylum-seeking migrants to travel between the two countries along a back road connecting New York state with Quebec.

Canada-US-Migration

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers guard the Roxham Road border between the United States and Canada on March 25, 2023, in Champlain, New York.

Lars Hagberg/AFP/Getty

An agreement to close an illegal border crossing point about 66 miles east of Akwesne took effect Saturday.

For two decades, the so-called “safe third country” agreement between the United States and Canada applied only to official border crossings, meaning American and Canadian authorities were unable to turn back asylum seekers who used the illegal Wrexham Road crossing.

As CBS News immigration correspondent Camilo Montoya-Gálvez reports, under the agreement brokered this month, the existing agreement will now apply to migrants crossing the US-Canada border at official border crossings, a change that Canadian officials have long pushed for, as US officials say. Said

According to Canadian government statistics, about 40,000 asylum seekers entered Canada without authorization in 2022, most of them along the unofficial Wroxham Road crossing between New York and Quebec.

By contrast, the Border Patrol processed 3,577 immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally from Canada in 2022, according to government data. Although illegal crossings into the United States through the northern border have increased in recent months, rising to 628 in February, they are below immigration levels recorded along the southern border, where thousands of immigrants are processed daily.

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