Quebec, Ottawa urged to take in Haitian refugees after thousands detained, expelled at U.S.-Mexico border

Some Quebecers are calling on the provincial and federal governments to take in some of the Haitian refugees who have been detained at the U.S.-Mexico border — and are likely facing deportation back to the impoverished Caribbean island.

A makeshift encampment under the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas, along the border, was a temporary home to about 15,000 Haitian refugees last month while they waited to be processed for asylum in search of a better life in the U.S.

But members of Montreal's Haitian community denounced the "inhumane" treatment of migrants at the camp,  where images that went viral showed American border patrol agents using aggressive tactics to prevent them from entering the U.S., such as hitting them with leather reins.

In the end, 7,000 asylum seekers were expelled to Haiti from the U.S., with Mexico sending back 200 people total. The last remaining migrants, who were living in squalid conditions in the camp, were cleared out by Sept. 24.

"We feel betrayed by this kind of policy," said Frantz Voltaire, a Montreal-based documentary filmmaker. His family comes from the southwestern region of Haiti and he has been researching the country since the 1980s. 

Voltaire says the conditions many are going back to on the Caribbean Island are devastating. 

"We live in a situation where you have kidnappings, where you have rape, you have violence," he said, adding migrants at the border are not all from Haiti, but rather people who travelled from as far as Brazil, Chile and Argentina.