The call before dawn by American border agents to their Canadian counterparts was shocking: a group of nine people, most of them, was about to enter Canada on foot.
On February 3 at 6:16 a.m., when the group was spotted, the border between Alberta and Montana was brutally not inviting, covered with snow, dark with a temperature in less than 17 degrees Fahrenheit.
Granpleuses of night vision captured by Canadian border cameras showed two little girls in pink winter wear holding a woman’s hand while they crossed the snow. More children followed online. Another adult dragged two suitcases.
The rapid intervention of the police crew mounted on the Canadian Royal who found that the group was the result of a newly reinforced border presence through the vast border between the United States and Canada. At 5,525 miles, the border is the longest in the world.
Until recently, the border had been described by the two nations as “without guard”, testimony to their close friendship.
But with the return of President Trump to the White House, he became a flash point in the relationship between the two neighbors.
Even before its inauguration, Trump accused Canada of allowing a large number of unauthorized migrants to enter the United States. He made a key demand for the movement of this movement because he threatens to impose prices paralyzing on Canadian exports to the United States.
After a stay of a month, Trump says that these prices will now come into force on Tuesday.
Canada has mobilized. He deployed more staff and equipment along the border and tightened the visa rules which, according to criticism, have made the soaking stone to illegally enter the United States.
The number of illegal passages in the United States from Canada has been relatively low to start, and has now dropped, indicating that Trump’s pressure response is working.
But now, a new dynamic emerges on the border: asylum seekers flee north to Canada while Mr. Trump has embarked on his deportation scanning plan.
Border
Each day, the cross-border crossing route-Sweetgrass in Alberta is an ordered buzzing trucks, trains and civil vehicles.
The communities on each side are close in all directions. Hit a fairly strong ball on one of the two Diamonds de Baseball in Couts, in Alberta, and there is a good chance that he will land in Sweetgrass, Montana.
The border authorities of the two countries even share a building.
“There is a narrow daily communication,” said Ryan Harrison, a GRC staff sergeant, who heads an integrated border application team, by a very cold February morning while he was driving along Border Road, a gravel lane snake through the plains that marks the border for several kilometers. “They are people with whom we dine and attend their retirement holidays.”
But Mr. Trump’s criticisms upset the commercial atmosphere as usual on the border.
Trump has been particularly alarmed by a leap in the number of unauthorized migrants entering the United States in the past three years.
The number of people apprehended last year illegally crossing Canada’s visit to the United States was nearly 24,000. (This pale compared to Mexico crossings: last year, more than 1.5 million people were apprehended on the South American border, show the data of the US government.)
Canada paid $ 1.3 billion Canadian dollars ($ 900 million) to improve border security, adding two Black Hawk helicopters and 60 drones equipped with thermal cameras.
He also tightened the requirements for temporary visas that some visitors arrived in Canada legally, but illegally enter the United States.
The Canadian government said its recent measures have lowered the number of unauthorized passages in the United States: around 600 migrants were intercepted on the border in January, against around 900 in January 2024, according to American data.
“Whether some of the allegations on what’s going on at the border are accurate or not, or credible or not, I don’t have the luxury of not taking it seriously,” Marc Miller, Canadian immigration minister, in an interview on Thursday.
He was in Washington, as well as other High Canadian Ministers who plan to meet officials of the Trump administration in a push of the last show to avoid prices.
Mr. Miller said he would explain the measures taken that Canada had taken and how they worked. But he also wanted to speak to American officials of the recent increase in people who arrived in Canada in the United States.
The opposite direction
The accent placed by Canada on the border, in the context of Mr. Trump’s inner repression against migrants, is the reason why the nine people entering Alberta on February 3 carried alarms: it was unusual to see a group this large crossing on foot in the heart of winter. The presence of young children made him more disturbing.
Canadian authorities say they have intercepted more people who arrive from the United States, but due to the schedule that Canada has been following in the publication of data, no number is yet available for weeks since Mr. Trump inauguration in January. But the government’s press releases suggest that the figures increase.
In Alberta, preliminary calculations show that up to 20 people have been apprehended to cross illegally this year, including children as young as 2.
On the other hand, only seven people were apprehended by crossing the border illegally in Alberta in 2024.
On the nine migrants found in Alberta on February 3, seven, including three children aged 13, 10 and 7 years old, were Venezuelans, the RCMP in New York Times told. The other two were 7 and 5 years old, Colombia.
The staff sergeant Harrison, who has been working on the border for two years, said: “This is the first time that I have seen the Venezuelans here.”
The Venezuelans fleeing the oppressive government of President Nicolás Maduro were offered protection around the world. Nearly eight million have fled in the past decade, according to the United Nations, an extraordinary number for a nation not at war.
Under the Biden administration, 600,000 Venezuelans already living in the United States obtained temporary protection and authorized to live and work in the country. Others were able to stay in small programs.
The Trump administration has ended all the protections for the Venezuelans, and most programs will expire in the coming months.
The abolition of Venezuelans has become a priority in Mr. Trump’s deportation. The Venezuelans described as criminals were sent to the American installation of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while others were expelled in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan government has recently started to arrest not only political activists, but also passers -by during demonstrations, and it is not clear how it will deal with returned migrants.
As a result, Canada has the policy of not expelling Venezuelans.
Safe country?
Canadian border officials refused to discuss what they did with the group of nine migrants detained in Alberta, saying they were protecting their privacy.
But a spokesperson for customs and American border protection confirmed that the Canadian authorities had sent them back to the United States and that they had been transferred to the care of immigration and customs application. Their status is unknown.
Canada and the United States regularly refer the asylum seekers crossing the territory of the other, on the point that the two countries are also safe for asylum seekers to submit their complaints, and that they should do it in the first of the two countries they arrive. Politics is officially known as a sure agreement on the third country.
But the Trump administration’s expulsion campaign and the changes in asylum policies question whether the United States is still a safe country for asylum seekers, experts and defenders say, and if Canada should continue to send people back to the border.
“This is the latest sign that Canada sends people and families to children in the United States, knowing that they are fully a great risk of being detained, and then returned to danger,” Ketty Nivyabandi, Chief of Canada of Amnesty International said, referring to the nine migrants that Canada returned to the United States.
“The Canadian government should not wait one minute more to withdraw from the safe agreement on the third country,” she added.
But such a decision would probably encourage more people to take refuge in Canada, creating new pressures on the country’s immigration system.
“This would almost certainly lead to an increase in unauthorized border crossings,” said Phil Triadafilopoulos, professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
However, he added, continuing to return asylum seekers to the United States, Canada reports that “it will not receive people who have lost their temporary protection status in the United States as hospital as in the past.”
And as the migrants who have crossed in Alberta illustrates, these groups, he said, can “include small children in truly disastrous conditions, knowing fully that the fate of these children and their families is very uncertain”.
Mr. Miller, the Minister of Immigration, insisted that Canada considers that the United States remains a safe country for asylum seekers.
“We must have a well-managed system on the border,” he said. “But that does not mean that we are naive, or we do not look at events that are currently happening in the United States”
Hamed Aleaziz contributed Washington’s reports, and Julie Turkewitz de Metetí, Panama.
