Chidi Nwagbo says he made a "stupid" decision paying human smugglers to get him into Canada that left him permanently scarred and in the hands of the very U.S. immigration authorities he was trying to flee.

The 57-year-old says he paid $2,000 US in cash to a human smuggling organization in New Jersey to escape the immigration raids sweeping the U.S. He says the smugglers lied to him about the dangers of the journey that almost killed him along the borderlands between New York State and Quebec in February of this year.

"If I had known that this would have been the outcome, I don't think I would have done it," said Nwagbo in a phone interview with CBC News from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre in Batavia, N.Y.