NYC Buses Migrants to Canada

But the migrants are taking Canada by surprise.

Quebec immigration minister Christine Fréchette told reporters in Montreal that the development was “surprising.” helping build the Republican Party in Texas into the dominant political force it is today and for being the man governors went to when they needed to clean up troubled state agencies.

She said it highlighted the need to “solve the problem of Roxham Road,” referring to an unofficial border crossing south of Montreal used by thousands of asylum seekers every year.

“I think it makes the urgency of the situation even more apparent,” Fréchette said, adding that Canada and the U.S. were negotiating to update the Safe Third Country Agreement.

Whittington and others were hunting with Cheney on the sprawling Armstrong Ranch in South Texas on February 11, 2006, when Cheney, while aiming for a bird, struck Whittington, who was 78 at the time. The accident wasn’t publicly reported until the next day when the ranch owner called the local newspaper – the Corpus Christi Caller-Times – and told the paper what had happened.

Not all migrants like the Big Apple. According to NYC Mayor Eric Adams, some migrants who had been bused to New York want to head elsewhere and he is helping them to cross the northern border to Canada.

“Some want to go to Canada, some want to go to warmer states, and we are there for them as they continue to move on with their pursuit of this dream,” Adams said.

According to the New York Post, migrants in New York City are being given free bus tickets to Plattsburgh, NY, about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. From there, they pay taxis and shuttles to take them to Quebec.

The treaty, signed in 2002, requires migrants to make an asylum claim in the first country they enter, whether it is the U.S. or Canada. But it only applies at official border crossings, which Roxham Road is not. This loophole allows the migrants arriving from New York to have their asylum cases heard by Canadian immigration authorities.

New York City has an ongoing migrant crisis, as states on the southern U.S. border bus newly arrived migrants to America’s most populous city.

In a January visit to Texas, Mayor Adams told reporters there was “no room in New York” for the migrants.

Days before, he had released a statement saying his city had welcomed 40,000 asylum seekers since last spring, providing them with food, shelter, and other resources.

“We are at our breaking point,” the statement read. “Based off our projections, we anticipate being unable to continue sheltering arriving asylum seekers on our own and have submitted an emergency mutual aid request to the State of New York.”

Cheney “Target” Dies

Whittington was sprayed with birdshot pellets to his face, neck and chest and suffered a minor heart attack due to a pellet near his heart. When he left the hospital about a week after the accident, he said, “Accidents do and will happen,” and apologized to Cheney, saying he was “deeply sorry for everything” Cheney and his family had to deal with after the incident.

Cheney was criticized for breaking a cardinal rule of hunting – that someone holding a gun should make sure they know what they are firing at before pulling the trigger – and for not immediately going public with what happened.

Of course, Cheney became the butt of many jokes. Speaking with Fox News after the accident, Cheney said it was “one of the worst days of my life at that moment.”

He said that the accident happened after Whittington had stepped out of the hunting party to get a downed bird in deep cover. Although Whittington was dressed properly in orange and the upper part of his body was visible, he was standing in a gully with the sun behind him.

“You can’t blame anybody else,” Cheney said. “I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend.”

Ohio Train Derailment

It’s been seventeen years since he made headlines as the embattled hunting partner of then-Vice President Dick Cheney who was hit by Cheney when the veep hit him instead of a bird he was hunting. This week, Harry Whittington, 95, died.

Whittington was long known for tracks, 20 of which carried hazardous materials. The derailment caused a massive fire that has forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes in the immediate vicinity of East Palestine in Ohio.

By Monday, residents of the village were still not able to return to their homes after the controlled release of a toxic chemical from the cars. Officials were draining vinyl chloride, a chemical that they said was unstable and could explode.

Scott Deutsch of Norfolk Southern said that small, shaped charges were being used to blow a small hole in each rail car. The vinyl chloride would then spill into a trench where flares would ignite and burn it away.

Prior to the controlled release on Monday, officials worried the five derailed cars carrying vinyl chloride might hurl toxic fumes into the air and shoot “deadly shrapnel” as far as a mile away.

One rail car in particular had been a focus of concern because its malfunctioning safety valves had prevented the car from releasing the vinyl chloride inside, a Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency official and a Norfolk Southern spokesperson noted.

The evacuation later expanded into two states. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro had ordered evacuations for a 1-mile-by-2-mile area surrounding East Palestine, a village of about 5,000 people near the Pennsylvania border.

This followed the evacuations that took place just after the massive inferno began Friday night.

Vinyl chloride can make someone pass out or die if they don’t get fresh air. The man-made chemical used to make PVC burns easily at room temperature; can cause dizziness, sleepiness and headaches; and has been linked to an increased risk of cancer in the liver, brain, lungs and blood.

Despite the weekend’s incident, rail travel is recognized as the safest method of transporting hazardous materials in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration.

“The vast majority of hazardous materials shipped by rail tank car every year arrive safely and without incident, and railroads generally have an outstanding record in moving shipments of hazardous materials safely,” the administration said.