In June 2009, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, a woman’s body was found, “with blows to her body and a bullet in the forehead, a classic revenge from drug trafficking,” according to a local newspaper. Further medical investigation determined that the 24-year-old woman with the first name Grise had had a Caesarean just a month earlier, although the whereabouts of the baby was unknown.

In January 2012, in the city of Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora,  a woman named Veronica Castro was “robbed and beaten,” dying three days afterwards. “When Castro died at 41,” reported CBC News in reference to her efforts to escape a long history of domestic violence, “she had spent almost half her life looking for a safe home without painful memories for herself and her son.”

In addition to a violent end, these two women shared something else in common. They both had sought political asylum in Canada, a status that the Canadian government had denied them. Both also met their untimely deaths soon after Ottawa deported them to Mexico. Read more