President-elect Donald Trump’s anger at Mexico over the flow of migrants to the United States is nothing new. Now, it has added Canada as a focus of attention on this issue.
“As everyone knows, thousands of people are entering from Mexico and Canada, taking Crime and Drugs to levels never seen before”he stated on Monday through the social media platform Truth Social. In the publication he also outlined his action plan: a 25 percent tariff on all imports from both countries.
Here’s a look at what’s happening on the US northern border.
According to the US Customs and Border Protection, Between October 2023 and September of fiscal year 2024, border agents made more than 23,000 arrests on the northern border. That number has increased in recent years, from just over 2,000 in fiscal 2022 and around 10,000 in fiscal 2023.
Most of the arrests occurred in a part of the northern border known as Swanton Sectoran area between Quebec and Vermont, New Hampshire and New York.
Robert Garcia, the Border Patrol chief in charge of the Swanton sector, said in an early October post on “more than 19,222 subjects from 97 different countries” They had been detained last year, which he claimed was “more than their last 17 fiscal years combined.”
In contrast, illegal crossings on the southern border reached historic highs at the end of last year, when almost 250,000 arrests in December alone. In June, President Biden signed an order restricting asylum to anyone crossing from Mexico, after which the numbers began to decline sharply. In October, border agents made about 56,000 arrests.
Canadian officials and experts believe the increase in illegal crossings is mainly due to Immigrants arriving in Canada from India on tourist visas or other types of temporary visas and they head directly to the border with the United States, using Canada as a springboard.
Indian citizens are the largest group of new immigrants to Canada. The combination of a large existing community and the activities of Canadian entrepreneurs and universities trying to attract workers and students from India has contributed to their numbers increasing in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most of these immigrants stay in Canada, but some intend to reach the United States, and Advertisements on social networks have helped popularize the entry from Canada.
For example, a TikTok ad seen by some Indian immigrants in Canada shows a group of men with American flag emojis hiding their faces and offers a “100 percent safe route.” The operator offers to taxi travelers from Brampton, a city outside Toronto with a large South Asian population, to New York.
The US federal government has deployed more staff to the region, placed more migrants in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and changed rules regarding asylum processing.
In 2002, the United States and Canada signed a pact allowing both countries to return migrants seeking asylum. The pact, the Safe Third Country Agreementwas expanded in 2023 to include the entire land border and inland waterways. Starting in August of this year, U.S. authorities also limited the time migrants have to find lawyers and provide evidence to asylum officials to avoid deportation to Canada through the agreement.
Earlier this year, the US returned only a few migrants to Canada under the agreement. After mid-August, when the processing changes came into effect, the US returned more than 400 migrants to Canada, most of them Indian nationals.
In June, arrests for illegal crossings from Canada skyrocketed to 3,600, according to US Customs and Border Protection. The number dropped to about 1,800 in September and to about 1,300 in October.
Now the incoming Trump administration has put the issue in its sights. Thomas D. Homan, whom Trump appointed his “border czar,” told WWNY-TV in Watertown, New York, that the crossing was a “huge national security issue.”
© The New York Times 2024.
