2 days ago
‘Complicit with a totalitarian regime': Canada's border rules are landing asylum seekers in ICE detention
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Canadian authorities have 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). Many have landed in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
The removals are a product of the longstanding 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. This means many asylum seekers who attempt to enter Canada through the U.S. are turned back at the border.
The agreement is based on the assumption both the U.S. and Canada have sufficiently robust refugee protection systems.
But with the U.S. asylum system now suspended and amid reports of refugee claimants facing deportation without so much as an interview, Canadian advocates say the U.S. is no longer safe for those fleeing persecution. Canadian authorities must stop the removals, they say, and allow refugee claimants to plead their cases on this side of the border.
CBSA data shared with The Gazette show authorities sent a total of 1,624 asylum seekers back to the U.S. between Jan. 1 and June 2, 2025. Though the deportation data isn't broken down by location, just over 40 per cent of all asylum seekers in 2025 — deported or not — made their claims at the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle crossing, south of Montreal, CBSA data shows.
Unless they have legal status in the U.S., all asylum seekers returned from Canada are transferred into ICE custody, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson confirmed in an emailed statement.
Canadian authorities 'are complicit with an increasingly totalitarian regime,' said Wendy Ayotte, a member of Bridges Not Borders, a grassroots organization of people living near the now shuttered Roxham Road crossing.
Ayotte called Canadian authorities 'cruel' for sending asylum seekers into the hands of the same immigration authorities who deported more than 100 Venezuelan men to a high-security El Salvador prison and reportedly removed U.S. citizens from their own country.
Her organization maintains a web page with information for asylum seekers planning to cross into Canada, which Ayotte said sees a steady flow of web traffic.
'A lot of people are totally ignorant' of the Safe Third Country Agreement, Ayotte said, including of how to assert exemptions that allow certain groups of people to claim asylum when crossing from the U.S.
One exemption is for those with family members in Canada. But some asylum seekers with legitimate connections are struggling to prove it, according to Jenn McIntyre, coordinator of the Canada-U.S. Border Rights Clinic, which provides legal assistance to migrants seeking protection in Canada.
'We do see people who approach the border and should be found eligible under the Safe Third Country Agreement because they have family members in Canada, but they don't necessarily have all of the information' needed to assert their eligibility, she said. 'They don't always have all the correct documentation on hand.
'And so we do see people turned back from the border even though they have families in Canada. The consequences of getting turned back are very severe.'
Most people are being detained upon return to the U.S., she said, which could eventually see them deported to the very country they fled.
'When a person makes a claim for refugee protection at a port of entry, a CBSA border service officer will determine if, on a balance of probabilities, evidence shows that the refugee claimant is subject to the Safe Third Country Agreement,' CBSA spokesperson Rebecca Purdy said in an email.
The onus to prove the right to seek protection is on the asylum seeker, Purdy said.
But that isn't always easy for someone fleeing persecution, according to Ayotte.
'Imagine someone without any prior preparation or knowledge presenting themselves at the border and, all of a sudden, they're going through an interview. But they don't understand the purpose of the interview,' she said.
Some of those seeking asylum at the border are Haitian, said Abdulla Daoud, executive director of the Refugee Centre in Montreal.
In February, U.S. President Donald Trump removed deportation protections for Haitians facing continuing gang violence that has seen more than a million people in the country become homeless. Many Haitians have family in Canada, Daoud said, making them eligible to claim asylum.
Daoud said he, too, had heard of people turned away despite a family connection.
Others are truly ineligible, he said, but have come to the border without understanding the rules.
'They are typically the most vulnerable of the vulnerable,' he said. By turning them away, Canadian officials 'are doing ICE's job for them.'
Most people claiming asylum in Canada have a legitimate fear of persecution or even death, Daoud said.
In 2024, nearly 80 per cent of asylum seekers who made their case to an immigration judge were granted refugee status (excluding claims that were withdrawn or abandoned).
Daoud said this proves most claims are legitimate. If eight out of 10 asylum seekers have a legitimate claim and those returned to the U.S. are facing increasing odds of deportation 'what is the statistical probability that we're sending people to their death?'
The contested agreement has been challenged in the courts. In 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld it, but sent a question over its constitutionality back to a lower court.
Though especially concerning now, the Safe Third Country Agreement, first signed in 2002, has never been acceptable, said Adam Sadinsky, advocacy co-chair at the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, which is participating in the continuing legal challenge.
'The way that refugees and asylum seekers are treated in the United States has always been problematic,' Sadinsky said. But he said the system has only become worse under Trump.
'What's clear in the United States now is that the asylum process is not being respected,' Sadinsky said.
In an emailed statement, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Julie Lafortune said the U.S. 'continues to meet the criteria ... to be a designated safe third country.'
She said Ottawa continues to monitor developments in the U.S. to 'ensure that the conditions that led to the designation as a safe third country continue to be met.'
Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab's office declined The Gazette's request for an interview.
The Liberal government has since tabled Bill C-2, which, among other measures, would further restrict migrants' ability to claim asylum.
