St. Johnsbury, Vermont —On Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled a plan to close an immigration agreement loophole that has allowed thousands of immigrants seeking asylum to travel between the two nations along a backroad connecting New York state to the Canadian province of Quebec.
Since early 2017, so many people have crossed the border illegally on Roxham Road outside of Champlain, New York, that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police set up a processing facility for them less than five miles (8 kilometres) from the border's official crossing.
The migrants were given a warning by mounties at the end of a narrow two-lane road that was surrounded by farms and forests that they would be arrested if they crossed the border, but once inside Canada, they were given permission to stay and pursue their asylum claims. Asylum seekers without citizenship in the United States or Canada who are apprehended within 14 days of crossing any point along the 3,145-mile (5,061-kilometer) border will be returned, according to the new policy. The agreement was supposed to go into effect at midnight on Friday. Before the Biden-Trudeau announcement, eight people in two families from Haiti and Afghanistan were the last migrants to pass through. Both claimed to have travelled around to get there.
Carrying his daughter Bianca to the border, Gerson Solay, 28, was apprehended and taken into custody for processing. He was taking advantage of a 2002 agreement between the United States and Canada that states that applicants for asylum must do so in the nation they first enter. For migrants travelling south, Roxham Road is a short taxi ride from the point where Interstate 87 approaches the Canadian border, and it is also close to New York City. The agreement, however, has drawn criticism from some who believe it could jeopardize asylum seekers' safety by preventing them from receiving crucial support from both governments.
President Biden is being urged by the humanitarian organization CWS to reevaluate the agreement, work with Congress to reopen the asylum process, and support laws that respect the rights of all people crossing our borders. The agreement comes as the Canadian border is wide open and the USBP is dealing with a sharp rise in illegal southbound crossings. By adding more personnel to the area, the Border Patrol has started releasing some migrants into Vermont with a future date to appear before immigration authorities. On a humanitarian basis, Canada also consented to let 15,000 migrants from the Western Hemisphere apply for asylum throughout the year.
More than five times as many migrants were stopped entering the country illegally from Canada in February with 628 stops made by U.S. Border Patrol agents. About half of them were Mexicans, who can travel to Canada visa-free from Mexico, as there were 418 occasions, an increase of 10 times from a year earlier in the Swanton Sector of the Border Patrol. State officials were informed by the police chief in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, that the Border Patrol had unexpectedly dropped off a vanload of immigrants at the town's welcome centre. Throughout the previous few weeks, the same thing repeatedly occurred.
The migrants who were dropped off in St. Johnsbury, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, had been apprehended along the border after entering the country illegally, and they were given a notice to appear for future immigration proceedings. Local officials claim they were not given enough time to plan and are currently putting together a system to offer services to migrants. A Haitian family with two boys, ages 17 and 9, a girl, age 15, and a bus to Miami were dropped off at the welcome centre on Thursday. A group of neighbourhood volunteers spent the day providing them with food, helping them find lodging for the night, and setting up transportation for them to catch the bus on Friday.