She sought asylum in Toronto as an unaccompanied minor. A new facility will help others like her get emergency housing and other help
Anchor House - at an undisclosed location - is believed to be the first emergency housing in Canada dedicated to unaccompanied refugee youth.
Tracy Muriithi, 23, who is a former unaccompanied minor refugee from Kenya, is pictured in one of the girls' rooms inside the Anchor House. The first youth moved in Monday. The Centre for Refugee Children opened it to provide emergency shelter for newly arrived unaccompanied minors.
Toronto Star, By Nicholas Keung, Senior Immigration Reporter, Feb. 25, 2025
Tracy Muriithi had never been away from her family, let alone travelling outside Kenya on her own.
When she landed in Toronto in January 2019 after a 20-hour flight via Germany, the then 17-year-old followed the signs to Customs and had no idea what she was supposed to do. She didn't even have a winter coat. Although she came here on a student visa, there was a darker reason for her travel, and the border guards questioned her. "They were like, 'Why are you coming from home? Are you really coming here to study?'" recalled Muriithi, now 23.
"I was very scared. I'm going to this new country where I don't know anything or anyone. The only thing I was banking on was that I could speak a bit of English. And I know my parents are not there to help me because we're time zones and time zones away."
The truth was, said Muriithi, her parents sent her to Canada to save her from gender violence back home. And the unaccompanied minor had to navigate a new life and a complex refugee system by herself.
According to the Centre for Refugee Children in Toronto, each year 400 to 500 unaccompanied and separated children come to Canada for asylum, about half of them destined for Ontario. They flee conflict zones and persecution based on race and ethnicity, as well as family violence. Their parents often don't have the resources to get the whole family out, and make a bid to keep their children safe.
'Neveah was failed’: Rare access reveals haunting details about the life and death of the girl found in a Rosedale dumpster
As part of an ongoing investigation of Neveah - the four-year-old whose remains were found wrapped in blankets in a dumpster in 2022 - the Star recently won access to nearly 1,500 pages of court records.
The Toronto Star, Toronto ON, February 15, 2025
By Wendy Gillis Crime Reporter, and Jennifer Pagliaro Crime Reporter
A rap at the door summoned the woman to the front entrance of a rooming house in east Toronto.
Outside the rundown two-storey home, an empty stroller sat parked by the driveway.
A young boy soon toddled up to the door, followed by two curious school-age girls.
Standing at the stoop, in the heat of a late June afternoon, was a trio of plain clothes officers from the Toronto police homicide squad.
The woman had one question for the detectives at her door.
“How did you find me?”
Only hours before, police had solved one of the most wrenching mysteries in recent Toronto history. More than a year after the decomposed remains of a small girl were found wrapped in blankets in a Rosedale dumpster, investigators had, at last, determined who she was. An anonymous tip, advanced DNA technology and pings off a cellphone tower had brought detectives to this doorstep in June 2023, face-to-face with the girl’s mother.
The children were ushered upstairs. Police needed to deliver the grim news and begin the next phase of their criminal investigation, one focused on a wholly new question about the child they now knew as Neveah.
A composite sketch of Neveah whose body was found in a Rosedale dumpster on May 2, 2022.
