Mexican refugee claimant murdered after deportation

When Veronica Castro was in a Canadian detention centre awaiting imminent deportation back to Mexico, she wrote a letter to a friend saying she feared the worst: "I will really need your prayers."

She had been struggling to stay in Canada since her refugee claim, based on domestic abuse and fear of returning to her family home, was denied a year earlier.

The odds had been against Castro from the start, as claims from Mexico have a high rejection rate — 82.9 per cent in 2011. And critics argue the Harper government's Bill C-31, designed to speed up the refugee claim process, will make it even more difficult for refugees from Mexico to stay in Canada.

For Castro, her letter to her friend now seems prescient.

She wrote that her deportation was a matter of "life or death … I'm shaking and terrified every time I think about my deportation. I am really scared."

Thirty-three days after being deported back to Mexico, on Jan. 12, 2012, Castro was murdered.

She was 41 years old.