Since December 2024, the federal government has invested more than a billion dollars along the border in an effort to appease U.S. president Donald Trump. But, when you’re on the ground, walking the woods and driving along the roads along the border, from Quebec to Manitoba and through northwestern Ontario, you find far more than cameras, drones, and helicopters.
There is the disparity between intensive controls in Quebec, which have led to ‘neighbourly denunciations,’ and the futility of monitoring thousands of kilometers of Canada’s border with the U.S. across the rest of the country. And, more importantly, there are those who feel compelled to take increasing risks to assert their right to asylum, as a result of the Trump regime’s increasingly militarized border — which numerous migration specialists have warned about since the implementation of the new safe third-country agreement.
The border road near the small town of Emerson in Manitoba is the only division between Canada (left) and the United States (right). Photo by Xavier Savard-Fournier
In Quebec, a new immigration crisis unfolded on July 13, just a few kilometers from Roxham Road, the former main point of entry for migrants arriving irregularly in Canada, located near the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing.
In the early morning hours, near the municipality of Hemmingford in Montérégie, a reckless driver operating a vehicle registered in New York State collided with an SUV on Route 202 near Jackson Hill. According to police reports at the time, an SUV transporting about 10 migrants was struck by a reckless driver. Four of them were transported to hospital while the remaining individuals fled the scene, leaving the overturned vehicle on the side of the road.
What this account does not mention is that another vehicle filled with migrants was following the first SUV. Among them was Astride, a Haitian woman in her sixties. She believed, at this point, that entering Canada would result in her death.
“I was totally shocked when I saw the overturned vehicle. We all became deeply afraid of losing our lives as our driver began screaming and driving increasingly faster, fearing the arrival of the police at the scene of the crash,” said the woman over the phone, whose name has been changed by Ricochet to protect her identity.
The situation is all the more tragic given that Astride knows the people in the crashed vehicle, having recently crossed the border covertly with them.
“It was very difficult. Sometimes we had to run through the night with our luggage. Some people fell, others stayed hidden. Not all of us were able to keep up.”
After being dropped off by smugglers at the edge of a forest near the border on the American side, the group of about 15 migrants used their phone GPS to follow an imagined straight line to Canada. Upon reaching a perpendicular road, Astride said they were informed that other vehicles would come to get them.
It took the group nearly four hours to cross the forest, relying solely on the light from their mobile phones. “It was very difficult. Sometimes we had to run through the night with our luggage. Some people fell, others stayed hidden. Not all of us were able to keep up,” admits Astride.
“In our situation in the United States, we had no other choice. To find a better life, we had to come here.”
All of these people chose to come to Canada to escape the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has intensified raids against immigrants, particularly in the New York City area where the passengers of the two SUVs come from. They are all concerned that they may lose their Temporary Protected Status in the U.S. and have decided to take action before it is too late.
When she went to church, Astrid frequently heard stories of ICE raids on New York’s Haitian community, who face deportation and limited legal avenues to seek asylum in Canada from the U.S. That’s why Astride did not hesitate for a moment to enter the country through the “back door.”
“In our situation in the United States, we had no other choice. To find a better life, we had to come here,” she said.
She hoped that her case would be heard after the fourteen-day period stipulated in the new Safe Third Country Agreement of March 2023, after which a person arriving from the U.S. is entitled to apply for asylum, even if they have entered Canada irregularly.
This agreement establishes that, with some exceptions, it is not possible to seek asylum here for people arriving from the U.S., since that country is officially considered ‘safe’ by the Canadian government – a claim that many humanitarian organizations dispute. In March 2023, the agreement was expanded to apply regardless of where people cross the land border, thereby blocking alternative routes such as Roxham Road.
At the end of each cul-de-sac leading to the border in southern Quebec, the government has put up signs in an attempt to ‘discourage’ illegal crossings. Photo by Xavier Savard-Fournier
It is also important to note that the federal government’s new Bill C-2, designed to “secure the border,” with the aim, among other objectives, to abolish the 14-day rule and restrict access to asylum by granting discretionary authority to the government over migrant control.
While seated in their SUV just before dawn on July 13, Astride and the other migrants are especially worried about their driver. He is shouting and frantically attempting to return to the scene of the accident.
In front of another wooded area in the same sector, the driver stops and forces everyone out of the vehicle. He then returns to retrieve the others from the site of the accident. “We had to stay hidden for a good two hours, lying on the ground in silence, before someone came back to get us,” she describes.
Between January and June 2025, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada recorded 701 interceptions conducted by the RCMP at the Canadian border, with 441 of these occurring in Quebec. In the previous year, there were 648 interceptions in Quebec, contributing to a total of 1,302 nationwide.
Meanwhile, Astride is now in Montreal. After hiding for 14 days, she applied for asylum. But, she is still scared, living in an apartment she knows she will eventually have to leave due to financial constraints, since she is not yet legally allowed to work while awaiting her asylum application. Speaking only French, Astride hopes she won’t have to go back to the U.S.
More control, more risk
Since the amendment to the Safe Third Country Agreement in March 2023, and the federal government’s $1.3 billion investment in December 2024 to enhance border security amid pressure from Trump, migration experts have become increasingly vocal in the media.
Across the country, migration experts consistently reiterate that additional border control does not prevent migrants from fleeing wars, crises, or complex economic situations. Instead, more control often compels people to undertake greater risks in pursuit of a better life.
Quebec saw further evidence of this in early August, when 44 migrants were found packed into a cube truck as they attempted to cross the border clandestinely at the Stanstead crossing in Estrie.
Unfortunately, this story is just one of many examples of the risks migrants take in their efforts to reach Canada.
For Jesus and Maria (names have been changed) a young Colombian couple in their twenties, neither surveillance nor the deaths recorded in the forests along the Canada-U.S. border deterred them from crossing the border in southern Quebec in December 2023. Instead, fear of the police led them to decide to cross at night in the cold, hoping that a nighttime crossing would reduce the likelihood of interception.
Upon reaching the heart of the forest, they were spotted. A drone then began chasing them, forcing them to run through the snow and seek shelter near a house in the area.
“We arrived at Roxham Road with a woman in her thirties and her daughter. The woman had offered to pay for the taxi in exchange for assistance with her luggage during the crossing,” explains Maria. “We took Roxham Road as planned but quickly headed into the forest to avoid detection.”
Over the next few hours, the group traveled through the snow without winter clothing, aiming to get as close as possible to a road leading to Montreal, their final destination.
However, upon reaching the heart of the forest, they were spotted. A drone then began chasing them, forcing them to run through the snow and seek shelter near a house in the area.
“It was cold, but we had to escape. As I ran, I stepped into a stream beneath the snow. I was so cold. The young girl was crying, and with all the luggage, it’s true that we were moving slowly,” Maria recounts.
“It was cold, but we had to escape. As I ran, I stepped into a stream beneath the snow. I was so cold. The young girl was crying, and with all the luggage, it’s true that we were moving slowly.”
That was December 2023. Since then, drones, cameras, helicopters, and surveillance have stepped up and become an integral part of policing the Canadian border.
In Quebec, even locals have reported being followed to their homes by RCMP vehicles or drones following the federal government’s investment. Several individuals have expressed their concerns, including publicly, regarding the methods employed by various police forces, notably the noise generated by the frequent passage of military helicopters currently used for border monitoring.
A few hundred meters from Roxham Road and the site of the July 13, 2025 incident, Denis Bouchard, a retired professor from the University of Quebec in Montreal, who has spent the last few months restoring his primary residence in Hemmingford and is increasingly concerned with the level of police presence in his municipality.
“You can sense that, suddenly, [after Roxham closed] the overall atmosphere along the border has changed significantly. It has truly become a monitored zone. I’m really uncomfortable with that, and I know I’m not the only one,” says Bouchard, who has lived in Hemmingford his entire life.
Bouchard has expressed specific concern regarding the new RCMP signs installed along the roadside since spring, as well as the distribution of pamphlets derived from these posters within the neighborhood, which urge residents to “collaborate in safeguarding our borders” by “reporting any suspicious persons or activities” by calling the number shown on the sign.
In Rainy River in northwestern Ontario, only a river serves as a border. However, there is only one bridge that leads to the border crossing. Photo by Xavier Savard-Fournier
The idea of denouncing or snitching on people and becoming “collaborators” evokes to him a reference to one of the darkest chapters in 20th-century history: just before the Second World War.
“I think what bothers me is that it’s being treated as if it were no big deal. This is not simply about informing citizens; it represents a significant paradigm shift when you encourage your citizens to denounce one another,” explains Bouchard.
“I do not want this to become the new standard. I would prefer a return to the previous approach, with the RCMP performing their duties without adopting a militarized stance. I believe they are capable of addressing smuggling networks before taking action at the border. They are the actual criminals, not the people who cross because they are facing difficult circumstances,” he adds.
A dose of profiling and danger
All it takes is a few minutes at the border to observe the extent of surveillance along the “old” Roxham Road. It only took the RCMP a few minutes to arrive and assess the activity of a “suspicious vehicle” in the area – the rental one this journalist was travelling in by himself – at this late spring lunchtime hour.
The various surveillance cameras installed along the intersections of Covey Hill Road alerted the police officer. According to him, he reviews all rental vehicles.
“You’re not my typical clientele,” he remarked to provide reassurance during his early intervention around noon with this journalist. What did he imply by this? It’s difficult not to interpret this as an acknowledgment of the racial profiling suspected by residents, given that he was standing in front of a white man with blue eyes.
Later in a phone interview, when questioned about his colleague’s earlier exchange with this journalist, Sergeant Daniel Dubois, an officer and acting patrol supervisor at the Champlain sector detachment of the Integrated Border Police Team, assured Ricochet that skin colour is not among the indicators or methods employed for border interventions.
“We don’t operate based on grounds for interception, but rather on suspicion. Suspicion can be based on several indicators: the time of day, the demeanor of the vehicle’s occupants, or whether we are looking for a rental vehicle. But we don’t intervene based on profiling,” Dubois said.
“Of course, if there is cause for suspicion, when you stand out, you become suspicious. But skin color at three in the morning is not the first thing a police officer is going to look at,” he adds.
Dubois emphasizes that the primary mission of police officers is to “protect Canada” and affirms that “no one is doing this with malicious intent,” even though he acknowledges that “sometimes this can be intrusive.”
Since last spring, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in agreement with municipalities in the vicinity of Roxham Road, has installed signs along local roads encouraging citizens to contact them to ‘report a suspicious person or situation.’ Photo by Xavier Savard-Fournier
Denis Bouchard remains skeptical. From his perspective, the heightened police presence has contributed to an increased risk of abuse, affecting both residents and migrants.
“So I don’t want more police officers, as they appear to be the ones responsible for creating the problem. They pushed people to go elsewhere, to more dangerous places, and to employ smuggling services,” says Denis Bouchard, sitting in his Hemmingford home.
“It used to be fine,” he said. “Migrants would arrive on their own by taxi at Roxham Road.”
Sergeant Dubois, who recalls the times when migrants arrived directly at Roxham Road and were automatically detained by police prior to initiating the asylum process, does not believe that the situation was “simpler before,” particularly in terms of logistics.
However, in terms of safety, the circumstances are indeed significantly different.
“We now encounter situations where the people we come across may be armed. As a result, the alert level remains high,” said Dubois, referring to criminal groups involved in border crossings. “Given the choice, I would prefer that people enter safely. I have no interest in seeing people, whether officers or migrants, get hurt in the woods.”
Ricochet was stopped twice by the RCMP in less than 24 hours at the border. “We’re looking for someone, and they often have rental cars,” the officer said the second time around to justify his intervention.
A system that pushes people into clandestinity
Data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada reveals a significant increase in the number of asylum claims processed at land ports of entry by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) offices during the first half of 2025, compared to the same period in 2024.
Between January and June alone of this year, there were 7,900 asylum claims at land ports of entry in Quebec, compared to a total of 8,405 claims in all of 2024.
Ontario ranks second province in Canada for of this type of application, although the province usually receives a higher number of asylum claims at its airports. In 2024, this trend was also observed in Quebec, which led with 23,020 claims at airports.
Just under an hour from Thunder Bay, Ontario, the Pigeon River forms the border between Canada and the United States. However, in many places, our reporter observed that it was entirely possible to cross the river on foot. There is also a road that runs alongside the river. Photo by Xavier Savard-Fournier
It’s worth noting, however, that for asylum seekers, Ontario remains the Canadian province that welcomes the most people with this status. According to Statistics Canada, the total number of asylum claimants, protected persons and related groups in the country for the second quarter of 2025 was 470,029, of whom 223,354 were in Ontario (47.52 per cent) and 185,742 in Quebec (39.52 per cent).
Some politicians have complained about the increase in asylum seekers at the country’s official points of entry. However, it is the very system some of them have put in place for covert entries that encourages this.
It is extremely difficult to enter Canada, even through designated ports of entry. For example, boarding a plane often requires a visa. As a result, many still resort to perilous journeys across the Americas to reach land border crossings into Canada.
Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, migrants who do not meet one of the few exceptions. or fail to prove their exemption at the border, will be automatically returned to the U.S. The two primary exceptions to the agreement are being an unaccompanied minor under the age of 18 or having a family member with the appropriate immigration status in Canada.
However, providing sufficient proof of these exceptions can sometimes be challenging, prompting some migrants to set off and try their luck through the “back door.” This is the case for Junior, whose name has been changed by Ricochet. Junior left Haiti in 2021, traveling through Chile and walking all the way to Canada.
Apart from the occasional flyovers by new helicopters to monitor the border, these small cameras are the first line of ‘security’ near Emerson, Manitoba. Photo by Xavier Savard-Fournier
After two years of migration efforts, he ultimately reached a land border checkpoint to seek asylum, as a close family member resides in the country. However, he was turned back to the U.S. because the name of his family member living in the country was not listed exactly the same way on his application as it appears on that person’s official documents in Canada.
To reunite with his family, Junior spent nearly two additional years in the U.S. before finally attempting to cross the border illegally in the spring of 2025.
“It took me about three hours to get through the woods with my phone. There were two of us, and we avoided houses because we knew there were cameras in the area,” Junior said.
“When I arrived in Montreal, I was very scared because I had no papers. Now that I’ve been here for 14 days and have applied for asylum, I hope everything will work out for me.”
Given the extent of surveillance in Quebec, however, several people working with migrants report hearing about increasingly remote entry points into Canada, notably the “Ontario forest.”
One border, two solitudes
Therein lies another irony of border controls on Quebec soil. Media coverage of interceptions and regular demonstrations of the technology used to monitor the border in southern Quebec, the effects of which Ricochet has witnessed, have not stopped people from crossing.
It has simply pushed migrants elsewhere along the nearly 9,000-kilometre border between Canada and the United States.
“Although the question arises, the answer remains difficult to provide. What I do know is that the provinces are doing what they can with the resources at their disposal,” said RCMP Sergeant Dubois.
At the corner of Covey Hill Road and Jackson Road near Hemmingford, a camera monitors vehicle traffic in the area. It was under this camera, a few hundred metres from the border, that our journalist was stopped by the RCMP last spring. Photo by Xavier Savard-Fournier
However, in the “Ontario forest” regions, including Thunder Bay, Fort Frances, and Manitou Rapids, the notion that a billion dollars can effectively “secure a border” appears to be smoke and mirrors. Despite the deployment of cameras and helicopter patrols, the police presence in these areas is significantly less substantial than that in Quebec, and numerous potential crossing points remain accessible.
“Securing such an extensive border seems impossible to me,” said Jennifer Dagsvik, director of the Newcomer Legal Clinic in Thunder Bay and professor at Lakehead University’s Faculty of Law. “It appears more like an act. People will find a way to be safe if they need to.”
The immigration expert also thinks that spending over a billion dollars on the border is “troubling” and that asylum seekers should not be seen as a “threat” to Canada. Especially since remote cities like Thunder Bay are always looking for new people to keep their communities alive.
Former Rainy River First Nation Chief Jim Leonard agrees, especially since migration has never really been an issue in Northwestern Ontario, although that does not mean no one is passing through there today.
“The only time we heard anything about this was about 15 years ago, when a group of Mexicans crossed the border before being caught in Calgary. Then, 10 years ago, we had drug traffickers. We saw their boats passing by, but we quickly put a stop to all that,” said the 69-year-old, who served as chief of Manitou Rapids from 1995 to 2017.
“The investment of more than a billion dollars at the border is just to please Donald Trump. In my mind, it’s a waste of public money. We don’t need all that,” he adds, sitting in his garden overlooking the Rainy River.
Traveling along Route 11 for several hours, passing through the United States, then arriving on Routes 12 and 201 in Manitoba, the forest eventually gives way to prairies.
Near Emerson, in the southern part of the province, the Patel family was found dead at the border after a snowstorm in January 2022.
Today, however, there is no real surveillance along the border, except for a few cameras along one of the many dirt roads that serve as the border line.
Behind the house of former Indigenous leader Jim Leonard, the Rainy River also offers a few crossing points for those willing to venture there. You can even hear the motorway on the American side, which runs very close by. Photo by Xavier Savard-Fournier
On one of these roads near Gretna, Terry, a father riding his motocross bike, says that the police presence is fairly new. What really catches people’s attention are the helicopters flying overhead. “It’s really since Trump complained that things have changed, even though it’s Justin Trudeau’s fault that everyone thinks they can come here,” he wished to point out.
Thus, when Clara, an Ecuadorian mother, crossed the border in this area last year with four of her five children, she did not encounter a single person on the Canadian side. She proceeded following a straight line across a snow-covered field to escape the police on the American side. “We ran because we were scared. The children were crying as they tried to drag their luggage. We were fortunate, nothing serious happened,” she recounts.
Clara was shocked to learn that in Quebec, neighbours have started spying on each other to find out who is helping migrants like her. After all, it was thanks to a local farmer that she was able to get to Winnipeg.
“Telling on people wouldn’t fly here either,” Terry said before riding off on his motocross bike in a cloud of dust.
Back in Montreal with a notebook filled with stories, it was ultimately Astride’s closing remarks during the interview that most accurately reflected the sentiments of those we met from Manitoba to Quebec.
“It’s terrible to think that we must go through such a traumatic experience, risking our lives, in the hope of a better life.”
However, it remains challenging to ascertain the exact number of migrants attempting to cross the border, as well as how many successfully made it, and how many were never seen again.
This story was made possible through a grant provided by the Association des journalistes indépendants du Québec (AJIQ). Read the French version at Pivot here.