The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (GRC / RCMP), the federal police, arrested a man on charges of "smuggling illegal immigrants" into the province of Manitoba in west-central Canada.

The police said in a statement issued today that the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) alerted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Integrated Border Enforcement Team (EIPF / IBET) on Saturday, January 27, at approximately 3:45 a.m., that individuals dressed appropriately for the Canadian winter were "walking along a railway line, north towards the Canadian border near Emerson."

The town of Emerson is located in southern Manitoba, at the border with the U.S. state of Minnesota and about 110 kilometers by car south of Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba.

Later, officers from the Canadian Integrated Border Enforcement Team conducted a roadside inspection near the town of Dominion City, about 20 kilometers by car north of Emerson, and stopped a vehicle registered to a rental company that included "a driver and seven male passengers," according to the police statement. The seven passengers, aged between 27 and 49 years, were all foreign nationals from the country of Chad in Central Africa, and were "detained under the Customs Act" and handed over to immigration officers of the Canada Border Services Agency (ASFC / CBSA) at the Emerson port of entry.

As for the driver, he is a Canadian from Calgary, the largest city in the province of Alberta in western Canada, named Saleh Youssef, aged 49, "and was arrested on charges of smuggling illegal immigrants under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act," a federal law.

Youssef is currently in custody and appeared in court in Winnipeg on January 29. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said that it and the Canada Border Services Agency are investigating the case.

This incident comes less than two months after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested four Chadian men in Emerson after they illegally crossed the border from the United States during a snowstorm. At that time, the police transferred one of the detainees to the hospital with serious injuries caused by severe cold.