Weather, eased COVID rules boost migration

WASHINGTON • Warmer weather and fading fears about COVID-19 have immigration experts warning of more irregular efforts to cross the Canada-U.S. border — and not only in one direction.

While Canada has for years been a destination for desperate asylum seekers who avoid official entry points in hopes of staking a refugee claim, anecdotal evidence suggests U.S. border guards are encountering more headed the other way.

The latest incident came late last month, when six Indian nationals were rescued from a sinking boat in the St. Regis River, which runs through Akwesasne Mohawk territory that extends into southeastern Ontario, southwestern Quebec and northern New York state.

A seventh person, spotted leaving the vessel and wading ashore, was later identified as a U.S. citizen. Brian Lazore is now in custody in what U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are characterizing as a human smuggling incident.

Court documents say Lazore specifically asked the six people on the boat, which had no life vests or water safety equipment, whether they could swim. All six replied, “No swim,” the documents say. It's the second high-profile incident involving Indian nationals in recent months. In January, a family of four died of exposure in blizzard-like conditions in Manitoba, just metres from the Canada-U.S. border, as part of what officials in Minnesota have alleged was a similar human smuggling effort.

Border guards and experts alike say that after nearly two years of rigid travel restrictions and strict healthpolicy enforcement, illegal and irregular migration is beginning to ramp back up towards pre-pandemic levels.

Border authorities in Maine have also recently encountered carloads of illegal migrants, including five Romanian nationals who entered last month from Canada and had no legal right to be in the U.S., where concerns about illegal migration at the southern border captures daily headlines.

Customs and Border Protection did not respond to media questions about two other April incidents involving a total of 22 people, including 14 from Mexico and seven from Ecuador, including which direction they were travelling when they were stopped. Chief Patrol Agent William Maddocks, who oversees that sector, said in a statement that border officials have seen a “notable increase of foreign nationals with criminal history” in the area in recent weeks.

In Canada, there's already evidence of a significant increase in the flow of migrants to Roxham Road, a spot near the border town of Hemmingford, Que., that in recent years has become arguably Canada's most popular unofficial border crossing. Canada eased its own pandemic-related immigration restrictions late last year, and the number of asylum seekers at the border has increased since then.