Chidi Nwagbo, a Nigerian facing a US immigration crackdown, has narrated how he lost many fingers to frostbite while trying to flee deportation to Canada from the American authorities.
Nwagbo, 57, had been living in the US since 1988, but when Donald Trump was re-elected in January, he felt he had no choice but to flee to Canada with the help of human smugglers.
The Nigerian said the smugglers lied to him about the dangers of the journey that almost killed him along the borderlands between New York in the US and Quebec in Canada in February.
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He added that he made a “stupid” decision to pay human smugglers to get him into Canada, which in turn left him permanently scarred. The failed plan also left him in the hands of the same US immigration authorities he was trying to flee from.
He paid $2,000 in cash to a human smuggling organisation in New Jersey to escape the immigration raids sweeping through the US.
“If I had known that this would have been the outcome, I don’t think I would have done it,” said Nwagbo.
Nwagbo said he felt he had no choice but to flee to Canada after Trump’s election victory in November. To carry out his relocation plan, a friend gave him a phone number linked to a WhatsApp account run by human smugglers from New Jersey.
After establishing contact with the smugglers, he and a few other immigrants who also wanted to flee the US were eventually taken towards the border between New York and Quebec.
At a point, the smugglers instructed Nwagbo and other fleeing immigrants to alight from the vehicle transporting them and run into the bush. They were assured that someone would be waiting to pick them up on the other side.
“As soon as I took a few steps, I knew I made a mistake,” Nwagbo said.
Nwagbo said he felt he would freeze to death as he walked through deep snow in the forest for hours.
A woman from Guinea who walked with him kept losing her shoes in the snow until finally, she left them and continued in her socks. Two women from Haiti struggled behind them, one carrying an 11-month-old baby.
As Nwagbo walked through thick snow, he lost his gloves, exposing his fingers to the cold, and found it difficult to answer calls from the smugglers trying to direct their movements.
“These people (the smugglers) will call me and say, ‘Just keep going, you only have 10 minutes’,” said Nwagbo.
“It was supposed to be a 30 to 40 minutes walk.”
Exhausted and numb from temperatures that dipped to -28 C overnight, the fleeing immigrants called 911 for help. At that point, Nwagbo said, he was no longer sure where he was along the border and feared apprehension by US Border Patrol agents.
“When I found out that it was Canadian (police), then it was a big relief,” said the Nigerian.
In the end, the frostbite Nwagbo suffered from the journey led to the amputation of his little, ring and middle fingers along with the top of his thumb on his left hand, and the loss of the top of his middle and ring fingers on his right hand.
Nwagbo and 98 other fleeing immigrants were eventually intercepted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in February at the Quebec-US border.
The Nigerian said he chose to use human smugglers because he believed he needed to go through US customs to reach a Canadian port of entry.
“I didn’t have all the information that I needed to make the right decision,” Nwagbo said.
The Nigerian, who is still awaiting word about when he will be deported, regrets his decision to use smugglers to flee to Canada.
“Don’t do it. It’s risky,” Nwagbo said.
“Smugglers only care about money. They don’t care about your safety.”
The Nigerian has five US-born children from two marriages. He received a bravery award in 2014 from the Columbus, Ohio, fire department, after saving a 10-year-old girl from drowning.
In 2021, he failed to get US citizenship after missing an appearance at an immigration hearing. His lawyer blamed the incident on a “scheduling error”. This led to him facing a removal order.
