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An emboldened Trump administration will likely be more effective in border crackdowns and immigration enforcement, threatening a new wave of irregular migration to Canada – and a further shift to the right when it comes to immigration debates in Ottawa, experts have warned.
Toronto Star reports that US President Donald Trump made sweeping changes on his first day in office. The changes target undocumented migrants in his country and essentially shut down the border to asylum seekers.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has already taken a marked turn in its response to Trump’s second term, not just in rhetoric but also in action. In the last two years, Canada’s welcoming tone toward migrants has been replaced by reduced immigration intake partly in response to housing and cost of living pressures, and most recently, $1.3 billion was invested in border security and immigration integrity.
During Trump’s first term, Canada saw a surge of irregular migrants crossing north by land to seek asylum here. The annual number of new refugee claimants surged from 23,655 in 2016 to over 159,000 in 2024. At the end of 2024, there were 273,000 asylum seekers in the queue.
The executive actions and proclamations made by Trump this week appear to be more comprehensive and carefully crafted. They cover changes in detention to removal, refugee settlement, asylum processing and even citizenship as a birthright.
In 2023, Canada and the US updated the Safe Third Country Agreement to ban anyone crossing anywhere along the land border from making asylum claims in the other country. The initial ban had applied only at the official ports of entry and prompted irregular migrants to sneak through unguarded entry points such as Roxham Road in Quebec.
Despite the expanded asylum ban and Ottawa’s new border surveillance and enforcement effort to appease Trump, desperate migrants won’t be deterred because they are not going to return to the Global South, said immigration lawyer Chantal Desloges.
While it’s yet to be seen whether the White House can secure the funding to build 100,000 additional detention beds and how it will boost enforcement, the planned raids in major refugee lawyer Adam Sadinsky said Trump’s rhetoric about the planned raids in major metropolitan areas and holding migrants in jail for the maximum time is enough to instil fear among migrants in the US.
There’s a provision in the revised Safe Third Country Agreement that allows irregular migrants to seek asylum in Canada or the US if they manage to cross an unguarded land border and remain undetected for fourteen days. Ottawa wants to remove the clause to tighten asylum eligibility and reduce refugee backlogs.
But critics said it’s not a real solution because it would simply move the backlog from the refugee board to the Immigration Department, which would be required to assess if potential deportees are safe to be sent back to their country of origin or to the US.
On Tuesday, Public Safety Minister David McGuinty said that so far, Canada hasn’t seen any increase in the number of irregular migrants, but officials are monitoring it closely. He also cautioned that anyone considering crossing Canada’s border illegally would be putting themselves at risk.
