Loophole that let asylum seekers cross border ends
The immigration deal announced Friday by U. S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Primeminister Justin Trudeau aims to shut down a process that has enabled tens of thousands of immigrants fromacross the world to move between the two countries along a back road between New York state and Quebec.
Since early 2017, so many migrants entered Canada via Roxham Road outside Champlain, N.Y., that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police staffed a reception center to process them, less than five miles from the official border crossing where they would be returned to the United States. Mounties warned they would be arrested, but once on Canadian soil, they were allowed to stay and pursue asylum cases that can take years to resolve.
The new policy says any asylum seekers who lack
U. S. or Canadian citizenship and are caught within 14 days of crossing will be sent back across the border. It was set to take effect at 12:01 a.m. today, a quick implementation aimed at avoiding a surge of refugee
claimants trying to cross, according to Canadian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the deal in advance.
“We are expanding the Safe Third Country Agreement to apply not only at
designated ports of entry but across the entire land border, including internal waterways, ensuring fairness and more orderly migration between our two countries,” Canada’s announcement said.
Canada also agreed to allow 15,000 migrants to apply “on a humanitarian basis from thewestern Hemisphere over the course of the year, with a path to economic opportunities to address forced displacement, as an alternative to irregular migration.”
Some of the last migrants to make it through were about eight people in two families — one from Haiti, the other from Afghanistan — who arrived at the U. S. end of Roxham Road just after dawn Friday. Both said they took circuitous routes to get there. Gerson Solay, 28, carried daughter Bianca up to the border. He said he didn’t have the proper documents to remain in the United States.
“That is why Canada is my last destination,” he said before he was taken into custody for processing.
The deal comes as the U. S. Border Patrol also responds to a steep increase in illegal southbound crossings along the wide- open
Canadian border. Nearly all happen in northern New York and Vermont along the stretch of border nearest Canada’s two largest cities, Toronto and Montreal.
It’s unclear how Roxham Road became a favorite route, but it’s just a taxi ride from where Interstate 87 approaches the Canadian border, and for southbound migrants, it’s a relatively short distance to New York City.
Although the numbers are still tiny compared with the U. S.-mexico border, it’s happening so frequently now that the Border Patrol increased its staffing in the region and has begun releasing somemigrants into Vermont with a future date to appear before immigration authorities.