CHAMPLAIN— They have come from all over the United States, piling out of taxis, pushing strollers and pulling luggage, to the end of a country road in the north woods.
Where the pavement stops, they pick up small children and lead older ones wearing Mickey Mouse backpacks around a "road closed" sign, threading bushes, crossing a ditch and filing past another sign in French and English that says "No pedestrians." Then they are arrested.
Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, migrants who came to the United States from across the globe — Syria, Congo, Haiti, elsewhere — arrive here where Roxham Road dead-ends so they can walk into Canada, hoping its policies will give them the security they believe the political climate in the United States does not.
"In Trump's country, they want to put us back to our country," said Lena Gunja, a 10-year-old from Congo, who until this week had been living in Portland, Maine. She was traveling with her mother, father and younger sister. "So we don't want that to happen to us, so we want a good life for us. My mother, she wants a good life for us."
