World

Sanctuary City Mayor Welcomes Ilegals To Olympic Stadium

REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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The mayor of Montreal is welcoming an influx of illegal refugees into his sanctuary city. Thousands of Haitian “asylum seekers” have flooded across the Quebec border from the U.S. over the last few months and Mayor Denis Coderre is promising full accessibility.

In a Tweet, Coderre declared, “You can count on our full cooperation.”

So many illegals are arriving in Canada’s second largest city that the city has offered the former Olympic Stadium — built for the 1976 games — as a temporary welcome center.

Montreal, which declared itself a sanctuary city in February, offers illegals access to all municipal services. It has been swamped by the resulting migration. “We’ve never seen this before,” said Francine Dupuis, who represents the Quebec govenment’s refugee coordination office, PRAIDA.

“It’s really quite a bit more intense than what we’re used to,” Dupis told CBC News.

On Wednesday, the illegals were bussed to the old Olympic Stadium that is now largely unused, with both the major league football and baseball teams departing the city years ago.

The declared refugees are usually housed in the the Montreal YMCA but there wasn’t enough room in the building. So, the Olympic Stadium offered the use of its empty space on Friday.

“We were quick to say, ‘OK, how much space do we need?'” stadium spokesman Cédric Essminimy said. “And in 24 hours, everything was set.”

There are still about 100 illegal refugees being held at a detention center at a Canada-U.S. border crossing just south of Montreal. PRAIDA says 1,174 illegals crossed the border last month. The year before that figure was 180.

A recurring complaint amongst the Haitians is that they feared deportation as a result of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen,” one “asylum seeker” told CBC. “So we checked online and we saw that Canada was going to welcome Haitians, and that’s why we come here.”

In May, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw the protective status of Haitians who took refuge in the country following the 2010 earthquake.

Up to 58,000 people could face deportation back to Haiti in January 2018.

A woman interviewed Wednesday at Roxham Road, a key point of entry for asylum seekers crossing illegally into Quebec, said she left the U.S. because she was scared.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen,” she said.

“So we checked online and we saw that Canada was going to welcome Haitians, and that’s why we come here.”

Another would-be refugee told reporters, “It feels really good to be in Canada because it’s so calm.”

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