A Canadian woman living in the U.S. exclave of Point Roberts, Wash., died at home days after a fall because deportation fear kept her from travelling through British Columbia to reach a hospital, her son says. Paige Adamson, 61, was facing removal proceedings over an allegation she had voted in a U.S. election.
A fall at home, and help she would not take
Adamson called Annelle Norman, a community support officer in Point Roberts and a friend and neighbour, on Thursday night, asking to borrow crutches from the local non-profit Circle Of Care. Norman found her on her sofa in severe pain: she had slipped and fallen on her right side and needed friends’ help to get up and to the bathroom.
Norman urged her to call paramedics or go to the community’s small clinic. Adamson refused, telling her: “I’m afraid if I go, I won’t be able to come back. They’ll keep me or they’ll deport me.”
Her son, Dylan Adamson of Maple Ridge, B.C., said his mother had been frail, with dental trouble that made eating difficult, and that she tripped and fell on a vacuum, striking her side. He said he later learned paramedics who saw her told her she needed to go to a hospital, but she signed a form declining further care. “She would have went to the hospital. The only reason she didn’t is out of fear,” he said. He had not known about the fall.
Norman checked on her friend over the weekend, but her condition did not improve. On Monday, Norman was told to come to the address. Adamson had died in the hours before, on Sunday. A spokesman for the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office said the death appeared to be natural causes. The county medical examiner’s office said her body was in its care pending examination by a forensic pathologist, and no official cause of death has been released.
Deportation fear that reached back to a September border stop
About a month earlier, on Sept. 15, Adamson was returning home from a birthday dinner in Tsawwassen, B.C., when U.S. border officers held her for roughly six hours and questioned her about voting. According to documents she later provided, the Department of Homeland Security alleged she had falsely claimed U.S. citizenship to register to vote in Whatcom County and had voted in Washington’s 2018 general election. Adamson said she did not recall registering to vote or casting a ballot, and knew she was not eligible.
Adamson, a Canadian citizen and U.S. permanent resident who had lived in Point Roberts since 2012, was placed in deportation proceedings. A hearing before a federal immigration judge in Seattle was scheduled for Nov. 4.
Her immigration lawyer, Len Saunders of Blaine, Wash., said that while she was legally entitled to leave and re-enter the United States during the proceedings, officers could detain her on return and send her to the detention centre in Tacoma. He said she had been missing appointments with her doctor in Bellingham, Wash., and that boat or plane trips she could not afford were the only alternatives he could suggest. “There are no doctors where she lives. For all practical purposes, she was in detention,” he said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment before publication deadlines on Friday.
An exclave where the hospital lies through another country
Point Roberts sits at the tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, below the 49th parallel, cut off from the rest of Washington state. Every road trip to a U.S. hospital — the nearest full-service care is in Bellingham — means crossing into Canada and back into the United States, two border inspections in each direction. For a resident already flagged in the immigration system, even an ambulance trip carried that risk.
Saunders said Adamson’s case was not the only one. He estimated about six other Canadians in Washington state face similar deportation proceedings, several of them after voter registration issues he says arose through motor vehicle offices or registration cards sent by mail. Washington election officials have said an accidental registration on its own is not a crime. Saunders called Adamson’s death an “absolute worst case outcome,” noting she had no prior immigration violations and no criminal convictions.
Her death comes as stepped-up U.S. immigration enforcement reaches into Canadian lives — from ICE’s interest in a Virginia warehouse owned by a B.C. developer to the sharp drop in Canadians travelling to the United States this year. Adamson’s two sons, both B.C. residents, survive her. A vigil was planned in Point Roberts for Sunday afternoon.
“Just because of a vote, my mom is dead,” Dylan Adamson said. “Just because of a stupid technicality, my mom is dead.”
