At times, a 25-year old woman said the snow reached her knees as she trudged through a dark, icy forest near the Quebec border in mid-January.
With temperatures hovering around -11 C, she said she was holding her daughter in one arm, while carrying a cellphone with her other hand as she listened to a voice transmitting instructions to her and four other Haitian migrants on where to walk, wait and turn.
“It felt like a race with time,” the woman recalled in a recent interview.
Weeks after this ordeal, the woman and her daughter are seeking asylum in Canada.
The Canadian Press interviewed her several times before and after she arrived in Quebec and agreed not to name her because she was afraid it could affect her immigration application process and her daughter’s life in Canada.
The woman’s journey is an increasingly common one, say migrant advocates. Fearing what U.S. President Donald Trump has in store for people with precarious legal statuses, they say migrants are risking their lives for the chance to claim asylum in Canada.
Republicans in the U.S. have defended their policies, insisting they are trying to end lawlessness in the immigration system.
But the woman said Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is exacerbating her fears.
“Am I not human? …. Why is someone so cruel and mean? Is that normal? Is it acceptable?”
Before she left for Canada, the mother said she knew the risks.
“I prepared for the worst. Even if we got caught, I would have begged them to let my child in. I just wanted her to be safe,” she said. “There was no path. It was throwing yourself, body and soul, into the unknown, with nothing but a voice, a phone number, without a known identity.”
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They set out with boots, coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. Initially, she had a backpack, but she quickly emptied it to lighten her load, keeping only her and her daughter’s ID. In the process, she lost a glove.
What the smugglers had described as a 35-45-minute walk stretched for hours, beginning around 5 p.m. and lasting until about 2 a.m. Another mother and child repeatedly fell behind, she explained, forcing the others to stop and wait for them to catch up.
As they approached the Quebec border, she waited with her daughter and one of the men for about three hours in near-darkness before the three others caught up, around 11 p.m.
She hid with her daughter along roadside hedges, sitting directly on the snow and trying to stay warm as they waited for a vehicle to pick them up. She said her daughter fell asleep from exhaustion.
During the wait, she called Frantz André, the head of a Montreal-based migrant advocacy group, pleading with him not to call border authorities. André, who had been in touch with her since last June, said he was afraid they would not survive the night.
“We were so cold,” she said. “I told him that if nothing happened by 3 a.m., then he could call. I was conscious of the limits that should not be crossed, especially for my child.”
The vehicle finally arrived around 2 a.m. “I was the first to get in the car with my child.” She was dropped off at a motel, exhausted but unable to sleep. “I was keeping an eye on my daughter,” she said.
The woman had been living in Georgia for the past two years. She said she first came to the U.S. from Haiti through a humanitarian parole program under the administration of former president Joe Biden. When Trump ended that program in late May 2025, she applied for temporary protected status, but she said she never received a response.
Trump’s administration is now attempting to terminate this temporary program as well. She said this could force thousands of other Haitians facing deportation to a country rife with political instability and violence.
Since May, she has had no legal status in the U.S., and paid about $4,100 to a local group in Georgia to arrange her transportation to Canada. She said the money was almost all she had.
Since Christmas, at least 27 Haitian migrants have been arrested after crossing the Canadian border on foot. Some were hospitalized with signs of hypothermia and frostbite while others were immediately sent back to the United States. A spokesperson with U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said that a migrant without lawful status may be transferred to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.
Under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, asylum seekers must apply for refugee status in the first safe country they arrive in, meaning someone in the U.S. can’t cross into Canada to seek refugee status. However, there are exceptions. A migrant who crosses the border into Canada from the U.S. and remains undetected for two weeks is permitted to apply for asylum in that country, as can an unaccompanied minor.
For two weeks after her crossing, the Haitian mother hid with her daughter in an undisclosed location north of Montreal. She then met with The Canadian Press in the Montreal offices of André, who is helping her apply for asylum.
For his part, André is optimistic about her chances: “If everything goes well, in two years, she will have her status. For now, she can look forward to a future without fear.”
The mother said she’s still processing her ordeal. “I haven’t cried yet. Maybe one day I will, to free myself. But for now, I still have things to do.” She said she hopes to enrol her daughter in school soon and dreams of a quiet life.
Her birthday on Feb. 12 carries special meaning this year. “I’ve already given myself my gift,” she said. “It was getting myself out of the mess I was in in the United States.”