The pre-dated call of the United States border agents to their Canadian counterparts was shocking: a group of nine people, most children, were about to enter Canada on foot.
On February 3 at 6:16 AM, when the group was seen, the Alberta and Montana border was brutally unpleasant, a snow -covered one, with a temperature of less than 17 degrees Fahrenheit.
The night vision images captured by Canadian border cameras showed two girls in a winter pink dress that had the woman’s hand as they stepped on the snow. More children followed in a line. Another adult dragged two suitcases.
The rapid intervention of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Crew found that the group was the result of a newly strengthened border presence on 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 both nations as « without guard », a testimony of his close friendship.
But with the return of President Trump to the White House, he has become a point of view 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. It has made this movement a key demand, as it threatens to impose parallel fares on Canadian exports in the United States.
After a rescue of a month, Mr. Trump says these rates will come into force on Tuesday.
Canada has been mobilized. He has deployed more staff and equipment along the border and strengthened the visa rules that critics say that Canada made Canada a passing stone to enter the United States illegally.
The number of illegal steps in the United States from Canada was relatively low to start and has now fallen, indicating that Canada’s response to Mr. Trump’s pressure works.
But now there is a new dynamic on the border: Asylum seekers flee from North to Canada, as Mr. Trump has begun in his spacious deportation plan.
Focus border
On a certain day, the border crossing of Coutts-Weetgrass in Alberta is a humidity of trucks, trains and civil vehicles.
The communities on both sides are close in every way. Make a strong ball in one of two baseball diamonds in Coutts, Alberta, and is likely to land in Sweetgrass, Montana.
The border authorities of the two countries even share a building.
« There is a narrow everyday communication, » said Ryan Harrison, a GRC staff sergeant, who runs an integrated border application team, said in a cold bitter on February morning while driving on the border road, a gravel lane that was hooked on the plains that marks the border for several kilometers. « These are people we are going to have for dinner and attend their retirement parties. »
But Mr. Trump’s criticism has increased the business atmosphere as usual on the border.
Trump has been especially alarmed by a leap of the number of unauthorized migrants entering the United States for the last three years.
The number of people who detained Canada in the United States last year was about 200,000. (This is still shown compared to Mexico Crossings: Last year, more than two million people were captured on the southern United States border, showing US government data.)
Canada has directed Canadian $ 1.3 billion ($ 900 million) to improve border safety, adding two Black Hawk Helicopters and 60 drones equipped with thermal cameras.
He also strengthened the requirements for temporary visas that some visitors used to reach Canada legally, but then entered the United States illegally.
The Canadian government says that its recent measures have dramatically reduced the number of unauthorized crossings in the United States: about 5,000 migrants were intercepted on the border in January, a third of the figure in January 2024, according to data from the United States.
« If some of the allegations of what is happening on the border are accurate or not, or not believing or not, I do not have the luxury of not taking it seriously, » said Marc Miller, Canada Immigration Minister, in an interview on Thursday.
He was in Washington, along with other tall Canadian ministers who were planning to meet with Trump administration officials in a last-ditch thrust to avoid rates.
Miller said he would explain the measures that Canada had taken and how they worked. But I also wanted to talk to North -American officials about the recent rise of people arriving in Canada from the United States.
The opposite direction
The focus of Canada on the border, in the context of Mr. Trump’s domestic repression in migrants, which is why the nine people walking to Alberta on February 3 raised alarms: it was unusual to see such a great group on foot in the heart of winter. The presence of young children made it even more worrying.
Canadian authorities say they have been intercepting more people arriving from the United States, but due to the calendar Canada continues to publish data, there are still numbers available during the weeks since the inauguration of Mr. Trump in January. But government news publications suggest that numbers increase.
In Alberta, preliminary calculations show that up to 20 people have been caught illegally crushed until the present year, including children up to 2 years.
On the contrary, only seven people were captured by crossing the border illegally in Alberta in 2024.
Of the nine migrants found in Alberta on February 3, seven, including three children of 13, 10 and 7 years old, were Venezuelans, the GRC said in The New York Times. The two were children, 7 and 5 years old, from Colombia.
Sergeant of staff Harrison, who has worked on the border for two years, said: « This is the first time I have seen Venezuelans here. »
Venezuelans fleeing the oppressive government of President Nicolás Maduro have been offered to protection worldwide. According to the United Nations, almost eight million have fled in the last decade, an extraordinary number for a nation not at war.
Under the administration of Biden, 600,000 Venezuelans already living in the United States received temporary protection and allowed to live and work in the country. More could remain under smaller programs.
The Trump administration has finished all protections for Venezuelans and most programs will expire in the coming months.
The removal of Venezuelans has arisen as a priority in the push of Mr. Trump’s deportation. The Venezuelans described as criminals have been sent to the United States installation in the Bay of Guantánamo, Cuba, while others were deported again to Venezuela.
The Venezuelan government has recently begun arresting not only political activists, but also people in protests, and it is not clear how it will treat returned migrants.
As a result, Canada has a policy of not deporting Venezuelans.
Country sure?
Canadian border officials refused to discuss what they did with the group of nine migrants detained in Alberta, saying that they protected their privacy.
But a customs spokesman and the protection of U.S. borders confirmed that Canadian authorities had returned them to the United States and that they had been transferred to immigration custody and custom customs. Its state is unknown.
Canada and the United States regularly return asylum seekers who cross the other, with the premise that the two countries are equally secure for asylum seekers to submit their claims and should do so in the first of the two countries where they arrive. Politics is formally known as a third -country agreement.
But the deportation of the Trump administration and the changes to asylum policies call into question if 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 last sign that Canada sends people and families with children again in the United States with full knowledge of a great risk of being detained and then returned to danger, » said Ketty Niveabandi, leader of the Canada International Canada chapter, in reference to the nine Canadian migrants returned to the United States.
« The Canadian government does not have to wait for a minute to remove from the third country agreement, » he added.
But this movement would encourage more people to look for refuge in Canada, creating new pressures on the country’s tense immigration system.
« Almost surely would lead to an increase in unauthorized borders, » said Phil Tradiafilopoulos, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
However, he added, continuing to return asylum seekers to the United States, Canada states that « he will not receive people who have lost their temporary protected state in the United States as hospital as in the past. »
And, as the migrants who crossed Alberta, these groups, he said, can « include children in really bad conditions, with the full knowledge that the fate of these children and their families is very uncertain. »
Miller, the immigration minister, insisted that Canada believed that the United States is still a safe country for asylum seekers.
« We need to have a suitable and managed system on the border, » he said. « But it does not mean that we are naive, or that we do not see events that currently happen in the United States »
Hamed Aleziz contributed to Washington’s reports and Julie Turkewitz Metetin, Panama.
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