Canada case poses question: Is U.S. immigration system safe?

CHAMPLAIN, N.Y. — In the looming darkness, the Nigerian family of four, including two children carrying stuffed animals and a violin case, climbed out of a taxi at the end of a deadend road in upstate New York as Canadian law enforcement officers watched a short distance away, across a ditch that marks the international boundary.

“This is an illegal point of entry, OK? If you cross here you are going to be arrested,” a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer said.

“Yeah,” muttered the man, who wouldn’t give his name, before he and his family dragged their belongings across the border and were led to a hastily built structure where asylum seekers are processed.

Tens of thousands have made the same northbound trek since early 2017, when people who despaired of finding a permanent safe haven in the United States under new restrictive Trump administration policies began turning to Canada for help. Over a sixhour span on Monday, this family, another group from Nigeria, a man from Syria, another from Haiti and a family who wouldn’t say where they were from all crossed at the same illegal entry point at Roxham Road, about 30 miles south of Montreal.

These migrants know that a longstanding agreement between the United States and Canada requires those seeking asylum to apply in the first country they arrive in. So, if they crossed from the U.S. at a legal Canadian port of entry, they would be returned and told to apply in the U.S.

But if they request asylum on Canadian soil at a location other than an official crossing, the process is allowed to go forward. In most cases, the refugees are released and allowed to live in Canada, taking advantage of generous social welfare benefits while their asylum applications are reviewed, a process that can take years.

Now, a legal case being heard in Toronto federal court this week is challenging that 2002 U.S.Canadian agreement, which the Trump administration has sought to replicate to stem the flow of migrants at the United States’ southern border, striking similar pacts with the governments of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Three human rights groups have filed the case calling on Canada to withdraw from the U.S.Canadian agreement, arguing that the Canadian government has no guarantee that immigrants returned to the United States will be safe because of the Trump administration’s “fullout assault on the rights of refugee claimants and refugees,” said Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, one of the groups bringing the case.