Two Israeli yeshiva students in Canada were arrested on drug charges, which were then downgraded to “crossing without a visa.” They are out on bail, awaiting trial.
The story, told to Arutz-7's Shimon Cohen by the brother of one of the students, began shortly after the recent Passover holiday, when the two decided to go to the U.S. to visit relatives. Shortly before their departure, they were told that they would need visas to cross the Canadian border into the U.S., but they decided to try to sneak across the border through a forest. Instead of “landing” in their destination of New York, however, they found themselves in Vermont.
A local guard discovered them and alerted police, who set off in pursuit of what they thought were drug smugglers, who have become a plague along the forested Canadian-Vermont border.
The boys were caught after a short chase and were placed in jail. “They were thrown into a dungeon-like cell for days without even being questioned as to whether they were carrying drugs,” the brother said.
The prison authorities then took the initiative of calling Rabbi Levi Kanelsky, of the European humanitarian organization Aleph, whom they knew as someone with contacts with hareidi-religious Jews. Aleph, with wide experience in helping Jewish prisoners incarcerated throughout Europe, made contact with the boys and with their families in Israel and was able to convince the Vermont authorities that the boys were not involved in drug smuggling.
The local police would not let them off scot-free, however, and decided to charge them with “illegal entry into the United States.” This seemed to indicate that they would soon be expelled back to Canada or Israel. In the meanwhile, they spent the ensuing two weeks in jail, provided with tefillin and kosher food by the local Chabad chapter.
At the end of the two weeks, however, the boys were informed that because of the heavy caseload in the local courts, their trial had been postponed until the end of this year. The boys were faced with the choice of either spending the next several months in prison, or putting up $20,000 bail each and remaining with relatives.
Last week, the boys' relatives arrived with the money, and they are now out of prison – forbidden to leave the United States until their trial is over.