A police dog reportedly discovered on Monday the dead bodies of two migrants in a New York county that is approximately 30 miles from the Canadian border.
Illegal migrant encounters into New York, mostly conducted through the northern border with Canada, have increased drastically the past three years—jumping from 12,669 in fiscal year to 2021 to 81,078 in 2022 and 129,247 in 2023, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. Between October and February of the current fiscal year, there have been 46,113 encounters.
Illegal entry through the northern border compiles the crux of migrant cases, including over 90,000 incidents reported in the 2023 fiscal year and more than 28,000 since October 2023.
On Monday, New York State Police (NYSP) responded to a tip from federal Border Patrol agents who found two deceased migrants in a wooded area in Clinton County. They were identified as Abdoulaye Ndoye and Ndongo Sarry, both 25, from Dakar, Senegal. The two were determined via autopsies to have suffered from hypothermia resulting from wet and cold conditions.
The bodies, ruled accidental, were found by a Border Patrol agent and his K-9 partner as part of a routine sweep of the area, according to NBC5 News. The dog located a black backpack near a snow-covered mound where one of the victims was found under the snow. The other body was found nearby.
Newsweek reached out to CBP, New York State Police and the Clinton County Sheriff’s Office via email for comment.
Clinton County, meanwhile, has been a source of consternation for longtime local Sheriff David Favro. The 20-plus year veteran testified in December 2023 before a U.S. House subcommittee on emergency management and technology.
He reportedly told lawmakers that migrants in Clinton County have come from 42 different countries, including more than 55 percent from Mexico and more than 22 percent from India. Haitian, Romanian and Guatemalan migrants each composed less than 4 percent of illegal entries.
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He also said that the county regularly experiences temperatures some 35 degrees below zero, accompanied with a deadly wind chill.
“Migrants attempt to seek shelter in barns, sheds, basements or even what they think may be unoccupied homes,” said Favro, whose office has 22 deputies that service nearly 80,000 residents, according to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. “We have responded to calls of residents awaking in the middle of the night to unfamiliar noises only to discover migrants that entered their home to get out of the weather.”
Favro’s concerns about the increased presence of migrants have been amplified on a statewide and national level by New York legislators in Congress like Representative Elise Stefanik, who earlier this week accompanied Republican U.S. Representatives Mike Kelly (Pennsylvania), Ryan Zinke (Montana), who are co-chairs of the Northern Border Security Caucus, and Northern Border Security Caucus member Nick Langworthy (New York) in warning Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about “serious concern about the unprecedented surge in apprehensions along our Northern border.”
“While the Southwest Border has been overrun with drug smugglers, we cannot allow another avenue for deadly, illegal drugs into our country and our communities,” 22 congressional members wrote in a letter to Mayorkas on March 25. “In FY 2024 alone, Border Patrol agents are on track to apprehend a record number of illegal immigrants at the northern border.
“These statistics are yet another example of how the Biden administration is downplaying the serious nature of this orchestrated border crisis. Every state has now become a border state under your leadership—or lack thereof.”
On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that the Republican-led House operating on a razor-thin majority was planning to send impeachment articles against Mayorkas to the Senate on April 10 “for high crimes and misdemeanors, including his willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law and his breach of public trust.”
Meanwhile, local volunteer groups in Clinton County continue to collect and disperse emergency aid bags to migrants, which include homemade hats and gloves, canned foods, water, and a card with the words “peace, love, and safety” in different languages, according to local CBS affiliate WCAX.
“People are just not seen,” Kathy Sajor, of the group Plattsburgh Cares, told the local news station. “They are invisible, they are in crisis, they do not speak the language, they do not know how to ask for help, they do not have a backup plan. These are people that have gone to the end of the world, so to speak, to try and find safety.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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