Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que. –The sign at the end of Roxham Road says “no pedestrians”.
But the tracks in the snow leading in from the U.S. border tell a different story – of families with strollers and suitcases crossing on foot into Canada along a new underground railway that leads straight to Hemmingford.
On Thursday alone, 19 people had crossed the border at this unmanned and isolated spot, through frigid temperatures, including four Turkish men, a Sudanese group of seven and another family of four of unknown origin – and this, by 10 a.m.
For Marcel Pelletier, the RCMP officer waiting for them on the Canadian side, it was business as usual.
“These parents are leaving behind everything they have,” Pelletier says, just a few feet from where a frozen creek and a white obelisk separate the two countries. “They don’t understand my English or my French, but you just try to communicate with them without scaring the kids.”
He says many of them, like the Turkish men who arrived Thursday, come by taxi or Uber from New York City – sometimes directly from JFK airport. They are dropped off on the U.S. side and walk across with their bags in tow.
Some of them come to Canada after working in Saudi Arabia, because they don’t want to be sent home to Sudan or Eritrea where there is civil war or forced into army service, Pelletier said.
“They don’t necessarily speak English but they all know the word “refugee” and that’s the first thing they say. And they all tell me they hear Canada is a democratic country that welcomes refugees.”
They are often unprepared for the Canadian winter, however – dressed in thin clothing with no boots or gloves.
A few weeks ago a Sri Lankan man ended up with severe frostbite, Pelletier said. He couldn’t remember whether the man ended up losing two hands and a foot, or one hand and two feet.
“You have to wonder, why are they taking such risks with their families? Sometimes they are looking for us to pick them up. They are frozen or wet.”
Pelletier will handcuff the adults, and arrest them. But then he takes them to the official Lacolle border crossing where they can file a claim for refugee status.
It’s a strange paradox – the only way for them to legally claim refugee status in Canada is to cross the border illegally.
RCMP officer Marcel Pelletier looks over the Canada – U.S. border on Roxham Road in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, near Hemmingford, Quebec on Thursday February 9, 2017. The road is used by refugee claimants arriving from the States. (Pierre Obendrauf / MONTREAL GAZETTE)
The Safe Third Country Agreement
Since 2004, the Safe Third Country agreement between Canada and the United States stipulates that someone wanting to claim refugee status must do so in the first safe country they arrive in. In other words, if they land in the U.S., they can only make a claim in the U.S. But the agreement only applies at formal border crossings. Those who come to Canada through forests and fields are eligible to apply for refugee status.
Designed to unclog the system and prevent “asylum shopping” the agreement has indeed limited the number of people claiming status in Canada. By 2005, the number of claims made in Canada had dropped by one third, from an average of 29,680 per year, to 19,934. In 2016, just over 17,000 claims were made.
Refugee advocates have long argued the agreement is unconstitutional, and that the U.S. is not a safe country for all refugees, because it routinely detains them – especially those from Haiti or Muslim countries – and does not assess the risk to failed claimants of being tortured or killed, before they are deported to their country of origin.
With U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive orders to suspend the refugee program for four months, bar all Syrian refugees indefinitely, and ban people from seven Muslim countries, they say there are now additional grounds for arguing that the U.S. is not a safe country for refugees.
Those executive orders are currently on hold, after a federal Appeals Court judge upheld an earlier court decision to suspend the immigration ban. But it’s not clear for how long.
“The U.S. was never safe for all refugees, and is now even less safe,” said Janet Dench, of the Canadian Council for Refugees in a statement issued January 29. “Withdrawing from the (Safe Third Country) Agreement would mean that those needing Canada’s protection could apply in an orderly way at the border, rather than being forced, as now, to cross the border irregularly, putting themselves at physical danger and promoting opportunities for smugglers.”
On Wednesday their calls were buttressed by a report from Harvard University, which argues that the executive orders would expand detention for refugee claimants, expedite deportations to dangerous countries, and discriminate against claimants based on nationality or religion.
In response to questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “very concerned” about refugee claimants crossing into Canada through isolated areas. But he would not say whether he would seek to suspend or withdraw Canada from the agreement.
The increasingly inhospitable climate for refugees throughout the U.S. election campaign and after Trump’s election victory has coincided with a rise in illegal crossings into Canada.
According to the Canada Border Services Agency, there were 7,021 individuals who claimed refugee status at designated land ports of entry in 2016, up from 4,316 in 2015.
Last weekend, 22 refugee claimants walked over the border from North Dakota to Emerson, Manitoba, bringing the total number of refugees crossing illegally into Manitoba since April, 1, 2016 to 403 – up from 68 in 2013-2014.
In Quebec, the number of people crossing the border illegally has also increased exponentially. From April, 2014 to March, 2015, 166 people were caught crossing the border illegally. By the next year, that number had almost doubled to 315. But in the eight months that followed – to November 30, 2016 –another 823 had crossed illegally, the CBSA said.
Immigration lawyer Mitchell Goldberg said he could only speculate as to what’s behind the surge.
“When a presidential candidate is making Islamophobic statements and calling Mexicans rapists… people feel very vulnerable,” Goldberg said. “People are desperate to get in because they are afraid they will be detained or deported from the U.S. And the one way to get in is to get across the border and say here I am. Then they are eligible to make a claim.”
Wanting to be caught
Back in Hemmingford – pop. 808 – it has become commonplace to see strangers appearing amid snow-covered fields and bare-branched apple trees.
Gerry, who lives on Nichols Road, which comes to a dead-end at the border, said on a recent Sunday morning he saw a family of 15 Pakistanis wearing traditional silk robes walking up the road. With thermal sensors installed along the border, the RCMP soon followed, he said.
Janet Cunningham, who lives a few hundred metres from the border on Roxham Road, said an Eritrean man passed in front of her house.
“I told him Montreal is that way,” she said.
But by the time they get to the corner, the RCMP picks them up, Cunningham said.
“I feel sorry for all these people who have to go to such extremes to get a better life,” she said. “As long as they’re not terrorists, they are welcome in this country.”
François Doré, a retired Sûreté du Québec officer who lives in the vicinity, said he has watched the situation intensify over the last few months, with the CBSA installing more sensors and the RCMP now patrolling the area around the clock.
He praised the work of the RCMP, and officers like Marcel Pelletier.
“To see a big man in uniform, take a little baby in his arms like that… Yes, they are handcuffed and they’re arrested. But they are doing great, humane work.”
There will be more people coming, he continued. “Today or tomorrow. They will keep coming.”
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