The Decibel - The growing crisis at the unofficial Roxham Road border crossing

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

An unofficial border crossing between Southern Quebec and New York state is at the center of a heated political debate. In December, almost 5,000 people entered Canada through Roxham Road, a stretch of road between the two countries that has seen an influx of migrants seeking to claim refugee status in Canada.Both official opposition leader Pierre Poilievre and Quebec Premier Francois Legault are calling on Ottawa to close the unofficial border. On Tuesday Prime Minister Trudeau said he’s in talks with the U.S. but declined to get into specifics.The reason why people are choosing this particular route is because of a loophole in an agreement between Canada and the U.S. called the Safe Third Country Agreement. Globe and Mail columnist Konrad Yakabuski explains what this agreement is and what may happen with it.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

For years, we have been focused on closing Roxham Road. The challenge is not to say, oh, we should close it. The challenge is how to close it. That's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaking on Wednesday about an unofficial border crossing between southern Quebec and New York State. It would be unfortunate to put up barricades and close Roxham Road only for border crossings to open up elsewhere along the 6,000 or so kilometers of border that we have with the United States.

In 2022, almost 40,000 people seeking refugee status in Canada entered at unofficial crossings. 99% of them entered through Quebec. And most of those people used the crossing at Roxham Road. The only way to effectively shut down not just Roxham Road, but the entire border to these irregular crossings, is to renegotiate the safe third country agreement, which is serious work that we are doing as a government right now. A lot of this has to do with an agreement between the U.S. and Canada that's making people turn to unofficial border crossings. Globe columnist Conrad Jakubuski is based in Montreal. He'll tell us about the agreement that has so many people using Roxham Road in the first place. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Conrad, thank you so much for joining me again. Thanks for having me. So you've actually been to Roxham Road. What does it look like? Well, I was there before it became famous back in the early 2000s. And in those days, you know, we were talking about a trickle of people who come across, which is basically a dead end street in upstate New York that comes to the Canadian border. And today, it looks very much like an official border crossing

that doesn't actually cross the border, that it stops at the border. And now there's a whole set of infrastructure that has been set up. And so what you see now at that unofficial border crossing is a whole set of temporary buildings like portables in the school that are set up precisely for the purpose of administering what has become, in essence, the most official, unofficial border crossing along the Canada-U.S. border. So over a period of about 20 years, that's a very different place then. And I want to talk a little bit about what happens to migrants when they do get to Quebec. But first, I think we just should do a little bit of groundwork to understand really what's happening here. The RCMP intercepted almost

40,000 migrants using an unofficial crossing into Quebec last year. And that's compared with just 369 coming at other unofficial crossings in the entire rest of the country. So this is really the spot where people are crossing into Canada. Why are so many migrants coming through Quebec and specifically here at Roxham Road? Well, it's well established in the United States. As you may or may not know, there's a whole network of people who essentially this is their business, transporting migrants from one end of the United States to the other. And people pay lots of money to be transported to this unofficial border crossing. It's highly publicized on social media.

It's highly publicized in underground networks, community, word of mouth. All of these things contribute to why would you go anywhere else when you know that this is a sure route to be accepted directly into Canada. You know, it's a bus ride from New York City. And as you may have heard that the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, is offering bus tickets for people to go to Plattsburgh. Only to come to New York City. And we are assisting in interviewing those who seek to go somewhere else. Some want to go to Canada, some wants to go to warmer states, and we are there for them as they continue to move on with their pursuit of this dream. And Plattsburgh, at the gas station in Plattsburgh, there's a whole bunch of taxis and shuttle services that offer services directly to Wroxham Road. It's a well

traveled network. It's easily accessible by compared to unofficial border crossings, obviously, that are extremely remote, hard to get to. Let's just clarify here, we've been using the term unofficial border crossing. So this is instead of an official border crossing. Exactly. What's the difference here, Conrad? Well, here we have to get into the safe third country agreement because an official border crossing is obviously when you have official border agents on both sides of the border, depending on which direction you're going, that will screen you and determine whether or not you have a right to enter the country. So, you know, Windsor, Detroit, the closest official border crossing to Roxham Road is La Colle. Basically, an official land border crossing is where there's agents, they're checking

your papers, this is all above board. Absolutely. And at an official border crossing, someone coming from the United States to make an asylum claim can be turned back to the United States under the Safe Third Country Agreement. So let's get into that. What is the Safe Third Country Agreement? Safe Third Country Agreement? seeking asylum. So for instance, if someone comes from Mexico through the United States to a land border crossing with Canada and tries to seek asylum in Canada, Canada can turn that

person back to the United States on the grounds that that person has to make an asylum claim in the first safe country in which it arrives. And because that person arrived in the United States on the grounds that that person has to make an asylum claim in the first safe country in which it arrives. And because that person arrived in the United States, that is the first country where it needs to make its asylum claim. Okay, so Canada says, you know what, US is a safe country, you should be safe here, you actually have to make your claim there. Okay. Exactly. And so when did this come into effect? The agreement tentatively came into effect in 2002 as it was negotiated, but it was officialized in 2004 in both Canadian and U.S. law. So prior to the officialization of the Safe Third Country Agreement in 2004, there was no mechanism for Canada to turn back asylum seekers coming from the United States. We did not

have a huge influx of asylum seekers coming from the United States, from third countries through the United States, until after the 2001 terrorist attacks. 9-11, you're saying? 9-11, exactly. And so that created a lot of anxiety on both sides of the border as to whether our border was secure enough. As you remember, there were unfounded rumors about some of the 9-11 attackers having entered the United States through Canada. So there was a lot of interest on both sides of the border to making sure the border was secure. And Canada also saw an uptick in the number of asylum seekers coming across the border after the 9-11 attacks. So both countries agreed to this agreement whereby the other could turn back asylum seekers from third countries that tried to enter the other country. Okay. And so how does Roxham Road fit into all of this then?

The Safe Third Country Agreement only covers official land ports of entry. Roxham Road is kind of a loophole then to get around the Safe Third Country Agreement because you can actually then get to Canada unofficially through an unofficial border crossing and claim asylum then. Exactly. Okay. For some reason, it was never anticipated that this would be an issue. It was seen as a minor omission, and it was only in 2017 when it became a serious issue.

So what happened in 2017, Conrad? Okay. So everyone remembers Donald Trump was elected as President of the United States in November 2016. And in January 2017, almost immediately after taking office, he passed an executive order that banned immigration visas into the country from seven majority Muslim countries. This was the so-called Muslim travel ban. Right. And so there were already a lot of people from those countries in the United States. And obviously, their fear of being deported or whatever, led many of them to look for alternatives. And that's how Roxham Road emerged.

It was already known. And at the same time, there was an exemption under Barack Obama that allowed for Haitians in the United States, even if they didn't have official documented status, to remain in the United States for a 10-year period that had existed since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. That period was coming up for expiration in Trump's term, and there was a fear that it wouldn't be renewed. And so that encouraged a lot of Haitian immigrants. There's a very large Haitian community in Montreal and Quebec to make the trek toward

Roxham. And by far, the number one country of origin for people traveling across Wroxham are Haitians. And so those factors combine to turn Wroxham Road in 2017 into, you know, serious business. We'll be right back. Okay, so Conrad, Donald Trump's been out of office, though, since 2020. But it sounds like the number of migrants coming across this unofficial border crossing are still high. So why is that the case? Well, Roxham Road was closed between early 2020 and November 2021. Canada was turning away asylum seekers as a pandemic control measure.

Since November 2021, not only did the number of asylum seekers coming through Roxham Road meet and exceed its pre-pandemic level, what we've seen every month since then that the number is increasing from one month to the next. And so by December alone, it was more than 5,000. Do we know why that is? Like, why are the numbers continuing to grow? The message gets across, and it's very mediatized in the United States now that this is a way to get to Canada. But as you also know, because the southern U.S. border saw a slowdown in illegal entries

and asylum seekers during the pandemic and how that has increased since the pandemic, it's only natural that as the number of people crossing the southern border into the United States increases, that a larger number of people are going to make their way to the northern border into the United States increases that a larger number of people are going to make their way to the northern border. On Tuesday, the president, Joe Biden, his administration announced that people entering the country unlawfully will be presumed ineligible to claim asylum, which is a significant change

to the country's policy that had allowed people to claim asylum if they're fleeing persecution. So what does this tell us about the Biden's administration stance here? If the Biden administration follows through with this new policy, because as of this point, it is just a proposal and they are obligated to go through a consultation process to determine and then officialize the policy. So if this policy does go ahead, it raises serious concerns about the safe third country agreement because that designation of the United States as a safe country is what the agreement hinges on. So Ottawa is obligated under the safe third country agreement to review whether the United States constitutes a safe country,

and it always has done that. So, Conrad, we've been talking a lot about policy and politics here, but at the heart of this discussion are real people who are trying to cross over and find a different life for themselves and their families. What is it like for migrants when they do cross over into Canada? First thing that happens will be that an RCMP agent will greet them and inform them that they are making an illegal crossing and that they are technically arrested. But once that person says, I'm filing an asylum claim, they are directly turned over to the Canadian Border Services Agency, which in turn turns them over to the Immigration Department, and thenthirds of those who arrive. When there was not such a huge backlog, people would arrive. They'd be housed by the federal government in hotels. They would do their paperwork.

They would then qualify for provincial social assistance while they awaited getting a federal work permit. And that process could take a number of weeks, maybe a couple of months. Now we have such a backlog that people arrive, they're put in hotels for weeks and weeks on end. They have an extremely difficult time finding accommodation. And provincial social assistance in either Quebec or Ontario is bare sustenance living. And so it hardly is enough to cover rents in either Toronto or even Montreal. And the backlog for getting a federal work permit now

is up to two years or more. So most of these people are prevented from working or a large number do end up working underground. It's not a good situation for anyone. This obviously puts additional pressure on all the social infrastructure. We are reaching a crisis situation that something has to be done. Either massively the federal government has to say, we're going to follow through with this policy of welcoming migrants,

and we're going to put the resources into doing so, or the alternative as opposition leader Pierre Poiliev and Premier Francois Legault have asked that they want Roxham Road simply closed. As Ottawa closed it during the pandemic, they argue it can be done again. Others argue that you close Roxham Road, you're just going to displace the problem. People are going to go to more dangerous border crossings. Mm-hmm. You mentioned the response from Quebec Premier Francois Legault. Can you just expand on that a little bit, Conrad? What has he said about this issue?

Well, Quebec argues, and probably correctly, that it has borne a disproportional share of the quote-unquote burden. We cannot have all the burden alone in Quebec. Of the nearly 40,000, 99% of them came through Roxham Road in Quebec. So that puts Quebec on the first line of dealing with this crisis. Because once, as I mentioned, they are housed by the federal

government in hotels and then qualify for provincial social assistance. They also qualify for health care. Their children go to Quebec schools. All of these are what Francois Lugo would argue are disproportional strains on Quebec's public services, whereas other provinces aren't bearing this brunt. Since last summer, Ottawa has transferred on an irregular basis some asylum seekers to other destinations, other cities in Ontario. But what we have seen since January is that Ottawa has been doing that on a more systematic basis. As of mid-February, practically all asylum seekers coming through Roxham Road were transferred to hotels in Niagara Falls, Cornwall, Ottawa, and Windsor.

It's kind of spreading out the, if you're spreading people out. Exactly. Yeah, different. You're spreading that out, but it's been astonishing at how quickly those hotels have filled up. It's estimated that there are now over 2,500 hotel rooms in the Niagara Falls region alone that are housing migrants from Roxham Road. And that is up from basically 100 at the beginning of the year. Conrad, what if we just allowed migrants that show up at an official border crossing from the US,

what if we just allowed them into show up at an official border crossing from the U.S.? What if we just allowed them into Canada? Is that an option here? Well, we might have no choice because the Supreme Court of Canada is now actually reviewing previous court cases, lower court rulings on the safe third country agreement. And so ultimately it will determine whether the safe third country agreement. And so ultimately, it will determine whether the safe third country agreement is constitutional. Refugee groups argue that it is not constitutional, it violates Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the right to liberty, life, and security of the person. And so we are expecting a ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada on that by the end of this session, so before June. There is little doubt, though on that by the end of this session, so before June. There is little doubt, though, that if the agreement was struck down, we would see a much

larger influx of asylum seekers coming from the United States. And to the extent that more are coming across the southern border, we would expect more would come across the northern border into Canada as well. Conrad, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thanks. Before you go, I want to let you know about a live Decibel event happening on Friday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern. We're discussing the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. I'll be speaking with Senior International Correspondent Mark McKinnon, live from Kiev,

and Europe Correspondent Paul Waldi in Warsaw, Poland. We're streaming the event live on YouTube, on Facebook, and on the Globe and Mail homepage. That's Friday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern. Really hope you can join us. Okay, that's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin.

David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.