Following Donald Trump’s confirmation of his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation in American history, Canada is preparing for an influx of migrants to arrive at its southern border.
As The Guardian reported, Trump told NBC News that he had “no choice” but to move forward with the removal of some of the estimated 11 million (the precise figure varies) undocumented individuals in the US after winning the election. Tens of thousands of Haitians fled to Canada during Trump’s first term in office when he revoked the group’s temporary protected status, which was ultimately reinstated.
The Migrant Route to Canada: a Lifeline or a Headache?
Many went across the Roxham Road crossing, a small country road that acted as a funnel in the forests of upstate New York for refugees trying to cross the longest land border in the world securely.
Nearly 40 000 people crossed into Canada in 2022 along Roxham Road, that has become a political flashpoint in recent years.
Others have come from as far away as Afghanistan, Yemen, and Turkey, but the majority of asylum seekers are escaping political repression, poverty, and conflict in Latin America crossing in upstate New York’s woodlands that has recently become a political hot spot. After Canada and the US expanded the Safe Third Country Agreement to include the whole land border rather than just formal crossings, that crossing was closed in 2023.
According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, Canada’s special law enforcement authority), it has measures to address a recent surge of crossings that has been “several months” in the works. Officers have the “tools and insight” to handle another rise, including a situation where hundreds of individuals cross daily, according to a federal police official.
The RCMP cannot return anyone to the United States if they claim asylum. Rather, their claims are added to a system that has an estimated 250 000 cases in backlog. A parliamentary committee heard testimony on Thursday that the average case processing duration is 44 months.
The Importance of Border Control
Experts worry that desperate families would travel more perilously over the 8850-kilometer border since official gates are now barred to migrants. The weather and terrain can be lethal in many places.
A family of four, including a newborn, perished in January 2022 after trying to enter the US from Canada. Temperatures had dropped to -35C, and police stated the group perished as a result of the harsh winds and extreme cold. In another tragedy, bodies of eight people, including two little children and their parents, were found on the St. Lawrence River last year.
Groups traveling from Canada to the US were involved in both cases, but migrants traveling north encounter similar difficulties as winter draws near, such as freezing weather, deep snow, and frostbite.
Politicians in Quebec, the province where the majority of the crossing occurred, cautioned that the federal government was ill-prepared for a recurrence of the previous Trump administration.
Separatist Bloc Québécois party leader Yves-François Blanchet claimed that Ottawa was “refusing to acknowledge an obvious and very serious situation” and that additional resources were required to foresee potential new routes taken by human smugglers.
Although border security is the responsibility of the federal government, Quebec’s premier, François Legault, told reporters that his government might send its own officers to monitor crossings, stating that he did not think the province could handle a large number of new arrivals.
The government “absolutely recognize[d] the importance of border security and of controlling our own border, of controlling who comes into Canada and who doesn’t,” announced Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister, earlier this week.