A Romanian man who perished in the St. Lawrence River with his young family last week twice came to Canada for asylum and was arrested by American authorities when trying to sneak into the U.S. to join his siblings there.

For five years, Florin Iordache was desperate to start a new life. He risked his personal safety all while starting a family with his partner as they struggled to find a new country to call home.

Iordache, the son of a Roma musician, first flew to Toronto to claim asylum on June 9, 2018 with his then common-law partner, Mona Lisa Calderaru. Two months later, he was arrested near Blaine, Wash., after hopping off a freight train to flee from American authorities.

In March 2020, after being deported from the U.S., Iordache and his now wife returned to Toronto from Romania, making a new refugee claim using his wife’s former last name. Eighteen months later, he and his wife — who was seven-months’ pregnant with their son Elyen — and their Canadian-born daughter Evelin, were arrested in Washington after trying to cross into the U.S. in a rental car through Pioneer Park in British Columbia.

The family was sent back to Canada this time, and Iordache would appear before a tribunal to plead for his release from detention, so he could be by the side of his wife and child.

“This is the second time that you have come to Canada to make a refugee claim. Both times you arrived in Ontario, but ended up in the Vancouver area. And both times you ended up in the United States,” said adjudicator Michael McPhalen at the man’s detention review in October 2021.

“I could possibly believe that a person could end up in the United States by accident once, but not two times like you have.”

Last week, Iordache and his wife, identified by police as Cristina (Mona Lisa) Zenaida Iordache, along with two infants with Canadian passports, were among eight migrants whose bodies were recovered in the St. Lawrence River near Akwesasne, Que., close to the U.S. border across from New York state.

The other four victims were an Indian family in Canada on a visitor visa, including the father, Praveenbhai Chaudhari, 50; mother, Dakshaben, 45; son, Meet, 20; and 23-year-old daughter, Vidhi. An Akwesasne man, Casey Oakes, whose boat was found near the bodies is still missing, but police have confirmed he is connected to the case.

The tragedy came less than a week after Ottawa and Washington hashed out a deal to tighten their bilateral border rules to stop irregular migration along the 9,000-kilometre shared land border between Canada and the U.S.

Iordache and his wife, both 28, sought asylum in Canada based on ethnic persecution as Roma minorities and were scheduled to be deported from Canada last Wednesday after they were assessed to be safe to return to Romania.

Their lawyer Peter Ivanyi said Iordache, a construction worker, has two brothers in Florida while his parents and a sibling are in Craiova, Romania.

Just two days before their removal, they were informed their request to defer the deportation was denied by Canada Border Services Agency, which was Iordache’s last contact with Ivanyi, who was not told of his clients’ plan to leave for the U.S.

“He was stressed to the max. This was consuming him. Everything had to do with the kids for him. Whenever he said anything, it was always, ‘Peter, please, I have Canadian kids and they need to stay here because I can’t take them home.’ He was prepared to do anything for his kids,” recalled Ivanyi.

“It might explain the dangerous decision that they undertook by getting into that boat. I guess he thought that was the only option. He’d run out of other options, is the way he viewed it.”

According to the transcripts from Iordache’s 2021 detention reviews, he got married a month before he and his partner returned to Canada for a second time, in 2020, with a passport using the wife’s family name.

The couple failed to show up at their refugee hearing in March 2021 and the claim was deemed abandoned. They re-emerged on the border agency’s radar later that fall when Iordache, his wife (pregnant with son Elyen) and daughter Evelin, were returned to the Pacific Highway Port of Entry by U.S. Customs and Border Control.

The couple told border agents they were on a road trip from Ontario to B.C., and the sole purpose of their trip was to visit Pioneer Park and they only entered the U.S. “accidentally,” blaming a GPS unit.

Authorities also found items that “make it clear that they intended to relocate to the U.S.,” along with $2,000 in cash, a rough map with directions, which noted Bender Road and Main Street in Washington State, the photo, address and rental agreement for a place in Nebraska on a tablet.

At his detention hearing in 2021, Iordache testified he left Toronto around Sept. 20 and stayed in a hotel in Surrey, B.C., before they were picked up by American authorities a week later.

“I went to visit, to relax with my family,” he told the tribunal through a translator, saying he wasn’t crossing the U.S. border to seek asylum.

He said he accidentally entered the U.S. because he had little schooling and didn’t know how to use the GPS.

“Basically, I try to take turns to get out on different streets or roads to see whether I can get reconnected … I was going all over the place, basically, just to try to see if I’m getting somewhere where it’s working,” he said.

During cross-examination, Iordache insisted he didn’t drive through a ditch or a field or through a fence to enter the U.S. Government counsel said it was impossible to cross from Surrey without going through an official port of entry.

In denying Iordache’s release, tribunal adjudicator Jerry Cikes chided the man for placing his young family in such an “outrageous situation” in the midst of a global pandemic.

“I find it very telling that you would also travel to British Columbia the first time you entered Canada with your wife, and you entered the United States from the Vancouver area with the same explanation that it was entirely an error on your part in terms of crossing into the United States knowingly,” Cikes concluded.

“You would take the opportunity to try entering the United States again or to effectively drop off the radar if given the opportunity.”

Iordache did. And this time, there’s no return.

Nicholas Keung is a Toronto-based reporter covering immigration for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @nkeung

SHARE: