KITTSON COUNTY, MINN. — Kathryn Siemer still remembers the feeling of dread when U.S. agents opened a backpack full of children’s items after rescuing seven Indian nationals trying to cross the Manitoba border during a -35 C blizzard last January.
The bag contained a diaper, clothes, toys and medication, yet there were no kids in the exhausted and frostbitten group of migrants who’d set off from the Emerson area the previous evening.
One of the migrants revealed he was carrying the backpack for a missing family of four who became separated from the larger group while trudging through snowy fields and deep drifts in darkness.
“Your heart kind of drops, especially when kids are involved,” said Kathryn Siemer, the acting patrol agent in charge of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol station in Pembina, N.D. “Children don’t have a choice.”
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