‘Terrified' Haitians in the U.S. are desperate for asylum in Montreal
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The rise in the number of Haitians living in the United States applying for asylum in Canada started even before Donald Trump was elected, Frantz André recalls.
In the months before his election in November, Trump had promised to deport more than 11 million undocumented migrants if he was elected. His anti-migrant rhetoric, coupled with baseless claims that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio, sent the message that their days in the United States could be numbered.
Their fears were confirmed in late June when the Trump administration moved toward deporting more than 500,000 Haitians living in the U.S. by ending their temporary legal status. The number of Haitians desperate to come to Montreal has surged in the last weeks.
'I have been getting calls every day from people in the United States who are terrified they will be deported,' said André, a co-ordinator at the Comité d'Action des Personnes sans Statut who has been helping Haitians to settle in Canada for more than a decade. 'We have spoken to people who have been hiding out in church basements for weeks in the U.S. because they're worried ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents) will come to arrest them.'
Many Haitians have been living in the United States under temporary legal status for more than a decade since the earthquake that devastated their country in 2010. Under President Joe Biden, the temporary legal status was extended until at least February 2026 because of gang violence, political unrest and other factors in Haiti. In June, the Department of Homeland Security attempted to move up the expiration date to Sept. 2 but was stopped by a federal judge in New York on July 2 who deemed the move unlawful.
Despite the judge's ruling, 'Haitians don't trust Trump,' André said. 'So they're still coming to to Canada because that's the one place where they might feel safe.'
In the first six days of July, officials at the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing between New York and Quebec received 761 asylum claims, a more than 400-per-cent increase from the year-earlier period, according to data from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Bloomberg News reported. The number of claims at the crossing rose 128 per cent in June and is up 82 per cent since the start of the year. Most of those claimants were Haitians, the CBSA said.
Advocates like André fear Haitians applying for asylum here could be putting themselves in greater danger of deportation because those who are refused entry to Canada are put into the hands of U.S. authorities, who could detain them or put them in prison pending deportation. Under the long-standing Safe Third Country Agreement, which requires anyone seeking refugee protection in Canada or the U.S. to claim asylum in the first of the two countries they reach, only Haitians who have close family in Canada can claim asylum here if they're coming from the U.S. Those who don't will be turned back. Even those with family here can be turned away if they don't have the proper documentation proving their case.
'Many Haitians living in the United States are not aware of these regulations,' said Marjorie Villefranche, the former head of the Maison d'Haiti organization in Montreal that serves the Haitian community. 'And they are trying to come in just as the Canadian government is making it more difficult for people to seek asylum here.'
She also questioned how the U.S. planned to deport 500,000 Haitians to a country whose main airport is closed.
Canadian authorities had returned more than 1,600 asylum seekers to the United States in 2025 without hearing their case for refugee protection, according to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Gazette reported in early June. Many have landed in ICE custody.
André noted that Canada has put a moratorium on returning Haitians to Haiti because of the unsafe conditions in that country. He accuses the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney of 'hypocrisy' by refusing access to Haitians from the United States and then putting them in the hands of U.S. authorities who might send them back to Haiti. Asylum claimants should have the right to claim their cases here, he argued.
'Canada is actually deporting people by proxy,' he said. 'Carney is making the rules tougher — he's using immigration as a bargaining tool because he knows Donald Trump is very sensitive about everything that's immigration.'
In an emailed statement sent earlier to The Gazette, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Julie Lafortune said the U.S. 'continues to meet the criteria ... to be a designated safe third country.'
In 2024, nearly 80 per cent of asylum seekers who made their case to an immigration judge in Canada were granted refugee status.
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