Montreal, Canada – Donald Trump has been within the White Home for lower than three weeks, however the US president has already launched what many say is a concerted assault 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 risk of tariffs to stress 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 insurance policies are trigger for alarm, and so they 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 changing into an agent of persecution of individuals inside its borders,” mentioned Wendy Ayotte, co-founder of Bridges Not Borders, a bunch that helps refugees and asylum seekers on the Quebec-New York border.
“After we return folks to the US 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 dwelling 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.
“Almost 10,000 frontline personnel are and might be engaged on defending the border,” Trudeau mentioned in a social media submit.
“Canada has agreed to make sure now we have a safe Northern Border,” Trump added on his Reality Social platform.
The Canadian authorities had already introduced a plan to spice up border safety late final 12 months, shortly after Trump first threatened to impose the tariffs. That $910m (1.3bn-Canadian-dollar) scheme included investments in drones, helicopters and different surveillance tools.
Migration on the Canada-US border is also already topic to stringent guidelines.
In 2023, the two nations expanded what’s referred to as the Secure Third Nation Settlement (STCA).
Beneath the pact, which first entered into pressure in 2024, asylum seekers should search safety in whichever of the 2 nations they arrive in first. Which means somebody who’s already within the US can not make an asylum declare in Canada until 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 might 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 just a few high-profile circumstances 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 12 months, US Customs and Border Safety reported just 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 have been registered over the identical interval.
I simply had an excellent name with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border with new choppers, expertise and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American companions, and elevated assets to cease the circulation of fentanyl. Almost…
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 3, 2025
The Canadian authorities has defended the STCA as “an essential software” 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 reply to 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 bunch concerned in a authorized problem in opposition to the STCA. The organisation has argued for years that the US is just not a protected place for these searching for asylum.
“Actually, the sequence of govt orders and the actions that we at the moment are 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 idea that it violates the rights to life, liberty and safety in addition to the suitable to equal safety as enshrined within the Canadian Constitution of Rights and Freedoms.
The Supreme Courtroom of Canada dominated on the suitable to life argument in 2023, saying that whereas asylum seekers confronted attainable 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 12 months, 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 have the ability to assess what is occurring proper now underneath the sequence 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 School of the Regulation, San Francisco, mentioned it’s “a really regarding time for asylum” within the US.
“It’s clear that the Trump administration has are available in with an agenda of proscribing rights and protections for migrants and asylum seekers,” she advised Al Jazeera.
CGRS is likely one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that was filed this week in opposition to the Trump administration’s efficient ban on asylum claims. The ban was specified by one of many Republican president’s govt 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 is just not truly the protected haven that the Secure Third Nation Settlement imagines it to be,” she defined.
She added that there are additionally considerations the Trump administration might 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 total enhance in hostility in the direction of asylum seekers and upholding our obligations to give protection to individuals who want refuge,” Dutton mentioned.
“Undoubtedly the concern is that the second Trump administration is just not 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 alter earlier than federal elections this 12 months.
But she mentioned politicians and Canadian voters alike face a important second.
“As Canadians now we have 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 feel now we have to look ourselves within the face and ask ourselves, ‘What can we stand for?’”