The unexpected place that could become an immigration flashpoint under Trump

The US-Mexico border isn’t the only place where the impact of President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policies is likely to be keenly felt. Major changes are likely to come to the US-Canada border, as well.

Tom Homan, who Trump recently named his “border czar,” has sought to sound the alarm about immigrants entering the US without authorization via the Canadian border, and has outlined plans to make entering the US through its northern border more difficult. Canada is also bracing for a potential influx of immigrants if Trump moves forward with his plans for mass deportations and to end temporary protections for more than 1 million immigrants in the United States.   

The Canadian border isn’t often a focus of the US political debate over immigration, but policy discussions on both sides of the border suggest that may change in the next Trump administration. That could both strain normally friendly US-Canada relations and reshape domestic Canadian politics on immigration.

Changes are already underway in Canada. After Trump’s election, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reestablished a special Cabinet committee on relations between the two countries that will reportedly have a major immigration focus. Trudeau will now not only have to contend with Trump’s policies but also a Canadian public that has become increasingly resistant to accepting asylum seekers and refugees in the last four years.

Though it receives less attention than the US-Mexico border, the US-Canada border has become a flashpoint in the past. During his first administration, Trump sought to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a set of legal protections for citizens of certain countries experiencing upheaval. As a result, thousands of immigrants flocked to the northern border in 2018 to seek refuge in Canada. 

In 2023, a dirt road in upstate New York also became an informal gateway for some 40,000 immigrants crossing over to Canada to seek asylum, most from Latin America but some coming from as far as Asia. The Canadian government eventually closed the crossing in 2023. Now, the border may again become a priority in US-Canada diplomacy. 

Trump’s plans for the northern border

Trump himself has not outlined his plans for the Canadian border, but Homan has been clear on his recommendations.

Homan said in an interview with a local TV station in New York earlier this month that the northern border constitutes an “extreme national security vulnerability,” citing increasing numbers of migrant encounters in recent years, including of hundreds of people on the US terror watchlist. Border agents recorded almost 199,000 encounters along the northern border in fiscal year 2024, which ended in October, compared to about 110,000 just two years before. 

Canada “can’t be a gateway to terrorists coming to the United States,” Homan said in the interview.

He added that he intends to tackle the pace of migration once at the White House by deploying more immigration enforcement agents to the northern border and encouraging Trump to negotiate with Trudeau to increase enforcement on the Canadian side. 

Homan also suggested that a version of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy could be implemented in Canada. It’s not clear exactly what that might look like or whether Trudeau’s government would acquiesce to such a policy, but the original version forced tens of thousands of migrants to await decisions on their US immigration cases in Mexico for months. President Joe Biden ended the policy on the Mexican border, but Trump has signaled he intends to revive it.

Canada is bracing for an influx of immigrants from the US

Canadian authorities are reportedly preparing for a wave of immigrants arriving from the US under a second Trump presidency, just as they saw beginning in his first. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police recorded an increase in irregular border crossings between 2016 and 2023 — from only a few hundred arrivals in a three-month period to over 14,000 at their peak — resulting in part from Trump’s immigration policies. 

The most direct example of that was Haitians who claimed asylum in Canada when Trump ended their TPS status, which had been in place since a devastating 2010 earthquake from which their home country never fully recovered. They arrived on foot and crossed the border between checkpoints. 

There are reportedly concerns among some Canadian officials that Trump’s mass deportations policy and targeting of TPS and other programs shielding immigrants from deportation will drive people to the Canadian border. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Canadian authorities are “drawing up plans to add patrols, buy new vehicles and set up emergency reception facilities at the border between New York State and the province of Quebec.”

These resources might help prevent tragedies like a 2022 case in which a family, aided by smugglers, froze to death on the Canadian side of the border while trying to enter the United States

The Canadian government also reportedly intends to enforce its so-called “Safe Third Country” agreement with the US, which states Canada has the right to deport asylum seekers who travel through the US before trying to claim asylum in Canada. Those migrants would then have to apply for asylum in the US. Homan has indicated that the Trump administration intends to detain them for the duration of their court proceedings in the US. Currently, most migrants are released into the US while awaiting their court proceedings.

Canada’s plans mark a departure from Trudeau’s previously open-arms approach to immigrants during the first Trump administration, one that reflects a broader change in Canadians’ feelings about immigration. 

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you,” Trudeau tweeted in 2017, just after Trump implemented his travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries. 

Seven years later, he said in a video statement that his government had “made some mistakes” on immigration in the post-pandemic era. 

“We could have acted quicker and turned off the taps [of immigration] faster,” he said.