Montreal, Canada – Donald Trump has been within the White Home for lower than three weeks, however the USA president has already launched what many say is a concerted attack on the rights of migrants and refugees.
The Republican chief has despatched migrants to the infamous detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; pushed for extra deportations; successfully banned asylum; and suspended the refugee resettlement programme.
Trump has additionally used the threat of tariffs to strain his nation’s neighbours — Canada and Mexico — to enact harsher measures at their respective borders to stem irregular migration into the US.
For Canadian rights advocates, the Trump administration’s anti-migrant policies are trigger for alarm, they usually have referred to as on Canada to cease sending most asylum seekers who arrive on the Canadian border in the hunt for safety again to the US.
“America authorities itself is turning into an agent of persecution of individuals inside its borders,” mentioned Wendy Ayotte, co-founder of Bridges Not Borders, a gaggle that helps refugees and asylum seekers on the Quebec-New York border.
“After we return folks to the USA as we’re at present doing, … that makes us complicit with an anti-refugee regime,” Ayotte, who lives within the small Quebec city of Havelock, advised Al Jazeera.
“It makes us complicit with the likelihood this particular person will both languish in detention in poor situation or be despatched again to their house nation.”
Canada-US border settlement
This week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced that the Trump administration had agreed to a 30-day freeze on deliberate tariffs for Canadian items after he made guarantees to tighten border safety.
“Practically 10,000 frontline personnel are and will likely be engaged on defending the border,” Trudeau mentioned in a social media post.
“Canada has agreed to make sure we have now a safe Northern Border,” Trump added on his Fact Social platform.
The Canadian authorities had already announced a plan to spice up border safety late final yr, shortly after Trump first threatened to impose the tariffs. That $910m (1.3bn-Canadian-dollar) scheme included investments in drones, helicopters and different surveillance gear.
Migration on the Canada-US border is also already topic to stringent guidelines.
In 2023, the two countries expanded what’s often called the Protected Third Nation Settlement (STCA).
Beneath the pact, which first entered into pressure in 2024, asylum seekers should search safety in whichever of the 2 international locations they arrive in first. Which means somebody who’s already within the US can not make an asylum declare in Canada except they meet particular exemptions.
The settlement beforehand solely utilized to asylum claims at official ports of entry, that means that individuals who crossed into Canada irregularly may have their claims heard as soon as on Canadian soil.
However in March 2023, Trudeau and then-President Joe Biden expanded the STCA to the whole thing of the border, together with between ports of entry. That has made it much more troublesome for folks to entry the Canadian asylum system.
Whereas there have been a couple of high-profile cases of individuals making an attempt to get into the US from Canada, the numbers stay low in contrast with these on the US-Mexico border.
Within the 2024 fiscal yr, US Customs and Border Safety reported slightly below 200,000 encounters with folks making an attempt to cross into the nation irregularly from Canada. On the US border with Mexico, greater than 2.1 million encounters had been registered over the identical interval.
I simply had a great name with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border with new choppers, know-how and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American companions, and elevated assets to cease the move of fentanyl. Practically…
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 3, 2025
The Canadian authorities has defended the STCA as “an necessary instrument” that helps each Canada and the US successfully handle refugee claims.
“Canada and the US proceed to profit from the STCA in managing asylum claims at our shared border, and we count on this to proceed,” a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada advised Al Jazeera in an e mail.
“The Authorities of Canada strongly discourages irregular border crossings,” the spokesperson mentioned.
“They’re unlawful, dangerous and harmful. We proceed working with our US counterparts to answer unlawful northbound and southbound crossings alongside the border as a part of our longstanding, collaborative efforts and mutual curiosity to maintain our communities protected.”
Rights advocates, nonetheless, mentioned the settlement doesn’t cease irregular migration however solely pushes determined asylum seekers to take riskier routes of their seek for security.
Gauri Sreenivasan is co-executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), a gaggle concerned in a legal challenge towards the STCA. The organisation has argued for years that the US isn’t a protected place for these searching for asylum.
“Actually, the collection of govt orders and the actions that we are actually seeing President Trump make [have made] the US dangerously extra unsafe for these searching for protections,” Sreenivasan advised Al Jazeera.
CCR, Amnesty Worldwide Canada and the Canadian Council of Church buildings have challenged the STCA on the premise that it violates the rights to life, liberty and safety in addition to the best to equal safety as enshrined within the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Supreme Court docket of Canada ruled on the right to life argument in 2023, saying that whereas asylum seekers confronted potential rights violations within the US, the STCA contained adequate security mechanisms to exempt individuals who may be in danger if despatched again.
However the justices despatched the case again to a decrease federal courtroom to rule on the equal safety argument. A listening to is anticipated this yr, however no date has been set, Sreenivasan mentioned.
She added that Canada doesn’t want to attend for the courts to rule on the STCA, although.
“They need to be capable to assess what is going on proper now beneath the collection of [Trump] govt orders,” Sreenivasan mentioned, “and clearly determine that situations are not protected, that there is no such thing as a efficient proper to asylum within the US.”
‘What can we stand for?’
Anne Dutton, senior counsel on the Middle for Gender and Refugee Research (CGRS) on the College of California Faculty of the Legislation, San Francisco, mentioned it’s “a really regarding time for asylum” within the US.
“It’s clear that the Trump administration has are available with an agenda of proscribing rights and protections for migrants and asylum seekers,” she advised Al Jazeera.
CGRS is among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that was filed this week towards the Trump administration’s efficient ban on asylum claims. The ban was specified by one of many Republican president’s executive actions on the primary day of his time period, January 20.
The order is getting used “to close the southern border to all migrants, together with asylum seekers”, Dutton advised Al Jazeera. “It’s actually shutting off the chance to hunt asylum proper on the very first level.”
Within the face of that, Dutton likewise expressed scepticism that the US is a protected place for asylum seekers.
“The truth that the US is wholesale eliminating entry to the asylum course of for folks in want of safety is a really regarding signal that the US isn’t truly the protected haven that the Protected Third Nation Settlement imagines it to be,” she defined.
She added that there are additionally issues the Trump administration may enact extra stringent guidelines and restrictions for people who find themselves already within the US and need to entry safety.
“We’ve seen simply an general improve in hostility in the direction of asylum seekers and upholding our obligations to protect individuals who want refuge,” Dutton mentioned.
“Undoubtedly the worry is that the second Trump administration isn’t solely going to proceed that trajectory however make it considerably worse.”
Again in Canada, Ayotte at Bridges Not Borders mentioned migration has been used as a “political soccer” by lawmakers north of the border, too – and that’s unlikely to vary earlier than federal elections this yr.
But she mentioned politicians and Canadian voters alike face a essential second.
“As Canadians we have now to ask ourselves, can we need to be compliant with this? Simply how far are we prepared to go to conform … [with] a bully and a racist who has no concern for human life?” she mentioned, referring to Trump.
“I believe we have now to look ourselves within the face and ask ourselves, ‘What can we stand for?’”
