EXODUS ON HORIZON
Windsor immigration lawyer Eddie Kadri, standing on the Canadian side of the Detroit River on Friday, expects a wave of human trafficking, and asylum seekers trying to cross the border in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban.
Windsor can expect to see an increasing number of asylum seekers crossing the Detroit River by boat or stashed away in the back of transport trucks as they flee the United States, predicts a local immigration lawyer.
Human smuggling will jump when the weather warms up and the “criminal element” starts taking advantage of fearful undocumented individuals living in the U.S., Eddie Kadri said.
“Human traffickers are going to prey on these people. We have very susceptible geography. These people are not 3,000 miles away, they are right at our border,” he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at rooting out undocumented residents and banning the entry of persons from six predominantly Muslim nations will put Windsor in the middle of the “perfect storm,” Kadri said.
“The environment in the U.S. is a situation of uncertainty. There is a lot of rhetoric with people seeing the writing on the wall that if they don’t try to get out (of the country), they will be forced out.”
The number of refugees entering southern Ontario has been climbing since late 2015, when Canada started accepting large numbers of Syrians fleeing civil war in their country. In the last few months, the number has jumped again and it’s suspected it now includes asylum seekers coming from the U.S.
Anyone arriving from the U.S. without documentation at the Ambassador Bridge or detroitwindsor Tunnel is turned back — unless they have a family member residing in Canada or attending school here, Kadri said. “So, this will force many of them to come to Canada illegally.”
Canada does not have a national strategy or resources to handle such a crisis, he said. “They are going to have to shift from working with (refugees and immigrants) attempting to enter legally to people who come here illegally.”
There were 464 refugee claims in February at ports of entry in southern Ontario, which include crossings in Windsor, Sarnia and Niagara Falls, according to the Canada Border Services Agency. The same ports of entry averaged around 175 refugee claims per month as recently as 2015.
Those numbers include asylum seekers coming from the U.S. and intercepted by the RCMP as they tried to cross the border illegally between the ports of entry.
The RCMP is just starting to compile statistics on the number of illegal border crossers coming from the U.S., said spokeswoman Cpl. Louise Savard.
Authorities on both sides of the border would work together should there be a spike in asylum seekers from the U.S. crossing in Windsor, as is already happening in Manitoba, she said. “We will dispatch reinforcements to the highest risk regions between ports of entry.”
City administrators are monitoring the situation, said Jelena Payne, Windsor’s community development and health commissioner.
“We regularly check with shelters or organizations such as the (Multicultural Council of Windsor & Essex County) on whether they are seeing anything. That’s where anything noticeable is likely to pop up.”
More than 90 organizations in Windsor pulled together to handle the influx of Syrian refugees and that network will help deal with any increase in asylum seekers coming from the U.S., Payne said.
Between November 2015 and early January of this year, Windsor has welcomed 1,273 government assisted and privately sponsored refugees — an average of just under 100 per month.
“We can’t predict what will happen (in the coming months), but we have dealt with this before,” Payne said. “We’ve got a system in place and we are ready.”