“I want Trump to militarize the northern border”

Sarah R. Champagne

Published at 0:00

• United States

Donald Trump threatened tariffs this week, citing “illegal immigrants” and the “invasion” of the United States. Le Devoir went to the Canada-U.S. border to better understand the current context. While some citizens are calling for militarization and tougher measures, others continue to insist on the need to humanize people trying to cross, in both directions. First of two texts.

Chris Oliver didn’t need President-elect Donald Trump to talk about the “northern border” to know that there are a lot of people crossing into the United States from Canada: The footprints are at the end of his field, where the bushes are trampled to the point of trails. His family has been based for six generations in Fort Covington, New York, just south of the Canada-U.S. border, which demarcates his land.

Previously, “a few people a year” would pass by, he says. But for a little less than a year, the young American father has witnessed dozens of people passing by each month. Which led him to install cameras along his fields and forest. “Run, run, run,” we hear in English on one of the videos thus captured, where we see three young children and a woman moving towards the south. Another woman, this one pregnant, then appears.

The data is clear: migrants who pass through Canada to cross into the United States represent a fraction of those who cross from Mexico. Nearly two million people per year on average were intercepted in the southern United States between 2021 and 2023, a peak that has fallen sharply in the last ten months, according to figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. By comparison, there were 23,000 people intercepted along the northern border between October 2023 and the end of September 2024. That is more than 80 times fewer than in the south.

The fact remains that the increase in the number of these interceptions is striking: they represent more than the previous 13 years combined. This summer, “the traffic,” as Mr. Oliver calls the phenomenon, was so bad that he had federal lawmakers on the phone and regularly speaking with the Border Patrol.

A modest bungalow overlooks his land. Right next to it, you can see a luxury Mercedes car — which doesn’t belong to him. “Yes, they’re driving across,” he sighs. The vehicle was abandoned last August by three people, whom he identifies as migrants, before the American border patrol came to pick them up. Those who force the border by car generally use old border crossing roads that are now closed, drive through fields and break down fences.

Photo: Marie-France Coallier Le Devoir Last August, American farmer Chris Oliver found a car abandoned on his land by three people he identified as migrants.

The area is nevertheless very closely monitored. All along his route that touches the border, he stops his van several times to point out the cameras installed by the American authorities.

“I hope that a new government will manage the problem better,” he says, revealing in the same breath that he voted for Donald Trump on November 5. Doesn't he fear, like many Quebec politicians, that on the contrary, arrivals will increase, even if they are more likely to cross into Canada? ? “The only decent thing to do is to try to slow these people down. So, yes, it will remain a concern. And, most importantly, I won’t know who they are,” replies Mr. Oliver, who says he believes Mr. Trump will be more willing to invest the resources needed to help him.

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Fears on both sides

And that's the problem that concerns him: not knowing who these people are. On the one hand, he believes that many migrants are “victims” of organized crime. But on the other hand, “there are also those who tarnish the name for others” – the “illegals who are real criminals”, he emphasizes, thus taking up Donald Trump's speech.

Not knowing if criminals are “hiding” among the “ordinary migrants” leaves him imagining the worst. “My neighbour no longer goes into the forest without having his gun on him. […] I can no longer let my children play outside if I think someone is going to walk right next to the house. I often work at night and I’m afraid of leaving my family,” he says.

Chris Oliver’s fears are echoed a few kilometres north of his farm. “Here, in the Haut-Saint-Laurent, we know our criminals. But here, we don’t know at all those who pass by.” The RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] does not inform us, there is no public information session,” laments Stéphane Gendron.

Photo: Marie-France Coallier Le Devoir Met at his home, former Huntingdon mayor Stéphane Gendron said he was worried about criminals crossing the border and hoped that Trump would militarize it, because, according to him, the Canadian army does not have the resources necessary to slow down the crossings in one direction or the other.

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Now based in Dundee, the former mayor of Huntingdon is true to his reputation and doesn’t mince his words. “I hope Trump militarizes the border and secures it,” he says, because he believes the Canadian military doesn’t have the resources to slow down the crossings in either direction. Coffee in hand, dogs at his feet, offering us fudge and date squares, he says he was in favor of keeping Roxham Road open for a few years. “But then I found it was laughing in our faces. You don’t go to someone’s house if you’re not invited,” he says.

“I don’t want to say that I’ve become radicalized, it’s more the end of innocence, as far as I’m concerned,” continues Mr. Gendron. He proposes that the 1951 Geneva Convention, which allows a person to apply for asylum once they are present on Canadian territory, be revised so that more direct returns can take place. He says he is aware that current laws do not allow this. “The principle should simply remain that we cannot be the dumping ground for human misery,” he argues, while expressing concern about the costs incurred by these requests.

Returning to the human

“It’s as if we can no longer talk about them by saying that asylum seekers also contribute to society,” retorts Wendy Ayotte from Havelock, about sixty kilometres east of Dundee. A member of the organization Bridges Not Borders, she points out that a large proportion of asylum seekers who arrived via Roxham Road have in fact been recognized as refugees in Canada.

Photo: Marie-France Coallier Le Devoir A marker marks the Canada-U.S. border.

The majority of applicants now arrive through airports, she points out, and RCMP interceptions at the border have shifted to British Columbia in recent months. “Of course, it’s disconcerting to see foreigners crossing your land when you’ve never experienced it, but you also have to understand the mechanisms and discourses that fuel these fears.”

The collective’s work in Roxham has allowed her to meet many of these people who have crossed and now work “often difficult jobs that Canadians don’t want to do.” “We’re afraid of them,” because of the risks they take to hide when crossing, explains Ms. Ayotte. Knowing them helps to humanize them, and personal stories “touch on another level” than migratory anxieties, she believes.

The group also anticipates the possibility that the movement at the Canada-U.S. border will reverse in the coming months.

Closer to Dundee, some citizens say they are less worried than others. “Yes, it concerns us. As long as they continue on their way, I don’t really have a problem,” says Johanne Lamarche, co-owner of a vineyard in Hinchinbrooke. Her land on the border with the United States is marshy, she says, and therefore less conducive to this type of movement.

Photo: Marie-France Coallier Le Devoir A system powers telecommunications with American customs on Chris Oliver’s land.

Other ways

Both Mr. Gendron and Mr. Oliver insist that they are not “against immigration.” “I feel sorry for them,” the American farmer says, picking up a pair of sneakers left in a bush. “I want a lot of Mexicans who live in the empty houses on the row instead of staying in the trailers and who work on our land, but I want them to go through the normal process,” Mr. Gendron says.

They both raise the issue of the cost of welcoming people. “We have to take care of our people first and foremost, especially the veterans, who we abandon,” Mr. Oliver maintains.

The only person in his circle who voted for Kamala Harris is his grandfather. “I told him: ‘You have five rooms in your house. Open your door and welcome them.’” But he didn't want to.”

For Stéphane Gendron, people forced to move in this way have “lost the lottery of destiny,” but that is no reason to be welcomed here, he emphasizes.

Tomorrow: cities and citizens want to be reassuring

More criminal networks since the closure of Roxham Road

Sergeant Charles Poirier of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) made no secret of it in his recent communications: here too, organized crime has taken over the lucrative business of moving human beings. As early as September 2023, while the RCMP was demolishing its last building on Roxham Road using mechanical shovels, Mr. Poirier indicated that the degree of “sophistication of the means” left little room for doubt.

Matthew Eamer, a retired Ontario Provincial Police sergeant, is unequivocal: “Humans are just another commodity for criminal organizations. They even call them self-loading cargo.” He was an investigator with the Integrated Border Patrol Team, and notably worked to dismantle a smuggling ring linked to the drowning deaths of eight people in Akwesasne territory, including two children.

He points out that the ease of these crossings is due to online communications, which allow smugglers to be reached in minutes, but also to transfer money from one end of the world to the other. Since the expansion of the Safe Third Country Agreement in March 2023, a new rule requires migrants to wait 14 days before applying for asylum. The “closure” of Roxham and this rule have “created a certain market,” says the former police officer bluntly.

“Smugglers have also taken advantage of the fact that it is easy to get a tourist visa in Canada and then go south,” he continues. A massive deportation program in the United States could this time plunge thousands of people into despair, “and organized crime will always be there to monetize it,” concludes Mr. Eamer, not optimistically.