Richard thought that Canada would be the end of his family’s hard times. His wife says that’s not what happened
Jeffrey is almost two years old, but he has already been to more countries than most people do in their whole lives.
He hardly makes a sound as he lies on his mom’s lap with his eyes wide open. Only when she puts him down does he cry.
His mother is Guenda, who is married to Fritznel Richard, 44, whose frozen body was found more than a week after he tried to walk into the U.S. on Dec. 23.
They are sitting on a couch at Guenda’s younger sister’s house in Naples, Florida. On the table next to them is a framed picture of Richard from their wedding.
Because Guenda’s immigration status is uncertain and she fears being sent back to Haiti, CBC has agreed not to use her last name.
“I lost a great partner and a good husband.” “He was there for us all the time,” she says.
It’s the day after Richard’s family held a small funeral for him in Naples.
Frantz André, who works in Montreal to help people who are looking for asylum, has come here to bring Richard’s ashes back to Guenda. He let the CBC follow him to Florida so that they could make a radio documentary about Richard’s life.
André has been giving free help to people looking for asylum in Montreal for more than seven years. He didn’t know Richard when he was alive, but after he died, he got Guenda’s phone number and offered to help answer police questions and set up Richard’s funeral in Montreal. He didn’t know Richard when he was alive.
He and Guenda both hope that Richard can be a change agent and push Canada to do more to help migrants.
7 days in the Darién Ga
Guenda talks about the life she had with Richard and the trips they took to find stability and safety.
“When I met Richard, my life changed. “He is someone who always makes you feel better and who always does his best,” Guenda says. He would say, “This is what we’ll do.” Everything will work out, and we’ll get out of this mess. Don’t get down on yourself. “Hold your head high.”
A year and a half ago, they were walking with Jeffrey, who was only two months old at the time, through the Darién Gap.
The Darién Gap is a dangerous 100-kilometer stretch of jungle on the border between Columbia and Panama. Hundreds of thousands of people, like Richard and his family, have crossed it to escape poverty and conflict in South and Central America, which were made worse by the pandemic.
Many people die on the way, either by drowning in fast-moving rivers or by being killed by bandits who kidnap and rape people for money.
It took seven days for the family to get through it.Beaucoup de souffrance“A lot of pain,” says Guenda in French.
On their way from Brazil to North America, they took a bus and walked through about a dozen countries.
Their journey is like that of a growing number of displaced people around the world, and they had to take risks along the way. Often, they ended up in richer countries where political debates about immigration and inefficient systems had made people even more hostile toward migrants.
Richard had heard that Haitians were more welcome in Canada, that they were less likely to be sent back to Haiti, and that it was easier for asylum seekers to get residency in Canada than in the U.S.
He thought that this would be the end of their troubles, but Guenda says that wasn’t true.
“It wasn’t at all simple.” “I got sick, Jeffrey got sick, and I caught a cold,” she says. Richard and Guenda had been living in Montreal for a few months, but they still didn’t have their work permits. They were getting help from the government, but it wasn’t enough to pay for their rent and food.
In October, Guenda hired a smuggler to help her and Jeffrey sneak back into the United States so they could go back to her sister’s house in Florida.
Richard decided to stay in Montreal because he wanted to get a job as soon as he got his work permit. Even though he had been in the country for more than a year by December, he still hadn’t gotten it. He missed his wife and child and felt lonely. He wanted to spend Christmas with them.
He hired the same man to take him to the border near Roxham Road, a popular illegal crossing point between New York State and Quebec’s Montérégie region south of Montreal. This is where he, Guenda, and Jeffrey first got into Canada.
When experts predicted a storm so bad that they called it a “bomb cyclone,” Richard tried to change the date with the smuggler he’d hired to help him get across.
Guenda says that the smuggler said no for some reason.
She says, “This is what this person does.” “That’s their job.”
Richard called her when he was lost, cold, and by himself and said, “I’m dying; I love you.” She begged him to call 911, but he was afraid to because he didn’t want to be arrested and sent back to Haiti.
Guenda says that all she wants for the future is to get temporary protected status in the U.S. and bring her and Richard’s other son, Dawins, 11, from Haiti.
Dawins just had surgery on his leg, so he doesn’t know yet that his father has died. In the midst of her own painful grief, Guenda is still trying to find the right time and the right words.
Immigration, Citizenship, and Refugees Canada says that in November it made it easier for people seeking asylum to get work permits.
Guenda says that Richard would not have gone down this path and died if he had been able to work.
Search for hom
Richard’s family says that he started looking for a place to call home when he was in his teens, after his mother got a green card in the U.S.
A few years later, when his older brother got cancer and then got better but their father was still mean to him, Richard began to act out. He spent too much time with bad people.
When they were pulled over, he was in the car with someone who had a gun. When the police found the gun, Richard was sent back to Haiti. Richard was determined to leave Haiti, so he learned English and then a few other languages.
He and Guenda moved to the Dominican Republic and then to Brazil, where Jeffrey was born. Richard worked in customer service for American companies.
At the end of January, Guadalupe, his older cousin, spoke at his funeral in Florida.
On a table next to her is an urn with flowers around it and a picture of Richard in a frame.
“Fritznel was a hard man. “He was strong and did not give up,” she says. “Looking at his eyes and all the pain he must have gone through on his journey through life, it’s clear that he must have felt very alone a lot of the time.”
Guada’s last name won’t be used by the CBC either. She worries that the fact that her family is in the country illegally could hurt her job. She moved to the United States in the 1980s, but she says that she was like Richard’s older sister.
‘The Canadian dream
While André, the advocate from Montreal, is in Naples with Richard’s family, he hears from people in Miami’s Little Haiti who tell him that U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas will be holding a meeting about Haitian migrants.
Before that, we walk across the street to the Catholic Church, where people are waiting in line to get help with their applications for temporary protected status in the U.S.
Father Youry Jules, the priest whom André talks to, says that many of the migrants he meets talk about Canada.
“They see that Canada is a land of opportunity and that it can accept us, but when they get there, they mostly find shame,” Jules says.
André introduces himself and says that he thinks Canada is a friendlier place than the U.S., but that it’s not true that you can get residency as soon as you walk in.
“I’m not telling you this to cheer you up. It’s up to you, but call me if you want to know more. He hands out his business card and says,
The eyes of a man named Alix Antoine were open. He knows a lot about Canada, but he’s not sure if he’ll be able to live there.
In an interview afterward, Antoine says, “We’re looking for a place where we can have a better life and be free to move around.” “To survive. “To live with honor.”
Antoine gave André a call only minutes after he’d left.
André says that the way the United States handles its borders has pushed people north toward a new “Canadian dream,” but that “Canada is not what it used to be because of the economy.” Still, he thinks it’s safer than the United States for migrants.
“They don’t know what to do anymore because of how people talk in the United States and even in Canada.” “They feel they’re the Walking Dead, across lands where they’re never welcome,” he says.
“I want to give them hope.”
There are no journalists at the meeting, but André says he asked Mayorkas what happened to Richard.
He says that the U.S. is to blame for what happened to Richard because of its part in the Safe Third Country Agreement. This is an agreement between Canada and the U.S. that says migrants have to ask for asylum in the first of the two countries they land in, unless they find a way to cross into the U.S. illegally, like on Roxham Road.
Mayor Kasich is in Little Haiti to talk about a new plan to stop Haitians, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans from illegally crossing the border into the U.S.
With this program, people can’t get asylum once they’ve arrived in the country unless they’ve already applied with a sponsor and been accepted.
André is worried that Canada will do the same thing. He says that Richard’s death shows what can happen when migrants are forced to take more and more dangerous risks.
“I’m sure Fritznel Richard will make a difference,” said André. “As an asylum seeker, he was not seen, so he is more present now than when he was in his body.” Now I can see him, and I’m here. I’m Fritznel Richard. “I am Fritznel Richard.”