Montreal, Canada – Canada has pledged to bolster security at its border with the United States, days after US President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose crippling tariffs in response to drug trafficking and undocumented migration.
Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters on Wednesday evening that his government “can make additional investments” at the border, without providing concrete details.
He also said Ottawa would impose greater restrictions to prevent people from going through Canada to reach the US without permits.
“We’ll continue to tighten the screws on that process to make sure that we continue to have an immigration system and borders that in fact support the integrity and security that Canadians and Americans work on every day,” LeBlanc said.
The minister’s remarks came after a meeting in Ottawa between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provincial premiers, who have raised concerns and demanded action over Trump’s tariff threat.
In a social media post on Monday, Trump — who takes office in January — warned Canada and Mexico that he planned to impose 25-percent tariffs on imports from both countries “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” the president-elect added.
While migrant and asylum seeker crossings at the US-Mexico border have drawn global headlines for years, the situation at the US’s northern border with Canada receives far less attention. Here’s what you need to know.
How many people are crossing the US-Canada border?
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) registered just under 199,000 “encounters” at the border with Canada between October 2023 and September of this year.
This includes people caught entering the US illegally, as well as people who are deemed inadmissible at a port of entry.
By comparison, CBP recorded more than 2.13 million encounters at the US-Mexico border in that same period.
What about drug trafficking?
Drug seizures at the border have gone down significantly, according to CBP figures.
Between October 2023 and September 2024, about 5,245kg (11,565 pounds) of drugs — largely marijuana — were seized by US authorities. That’s down from some 25,000kg (55,101 pounds) seized over the same period a year earlier.
What immigration rules govern the US-Canada border?
Last year, the US and Canada expanded a decades-old agreement to give authorities the power to immediately expel asylum seekers who cross the nations’ shared border at unofficial points of entry.
Since 2004, the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) has forced asylum seekers to apply for protection in the first country they arrived in — the US or Canada, but not both.
But a loophole had allowed people to seek protection if they reached Canadian soil. Thousands of asylum seekers crossed into Canada during Trump’s first term in office amid a wave of anti-immigrant policies.
Now, the STCA applies to the entirety of the US-Canada land border, which stretches 6,416km (3,987 miles), and people can be turned back between ports of entry.
Who is trying to get into the US via Canada?
In recent months, as the rules governing the border tightened, citizens of countries that do not require visas to travel to Canada have used the country as a jumping-off point to try to reach the United States.
Last year, media outlets reported that US President Joe Biden’s administration had asked Canada to impose visa requirements for Mexican nationals amid an increase in crossings at the northern border.
Ottawa reimposed the visa measures in February in response to what it said was a spike in asylum claims from Mexican citizens.
Meanwhile, asylum seekers who have had their protection claims rejected by Canada have also sought to cross into the US in recent years — sometimes with the help of human smugglers, and sometimes with deadly results.
In 2023, a family that had their asylum claim rejected in Canada drowned while trying to cross into the US by boat. They were facing deportation to their native Romania. Their bodies were found in the St Lawrence River.
In January 2022, a family from India also froze to death in Manitoba — a province in central Canada — after they tried reaching the US on foot during freezing winter weather.
So does the situation really merit Trump’s tariffs threat?
That depends on who you’re asking.
Both American and Canadian lawmakers have urged their respective governments to do more to address the situation at the border.
For example, in September, a bipartisan group of US senators put forward legislation to “strengthen security” at the border with Canada. The bill would require the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a “Northern Border Threat Analysis” and update its strategy there.
“The threats at our Northern border are constantly evolving, and so too must our strategy to combat these threats,” Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who co-sponsored the measure, said in a statement. Her state, New Hampshire, sits on the border.
“This bipartisan bill will strengthen law enforcement’s efforts to stop the transnational criminal organizations that are flooding our streets with fentanyl and other deadly drugs.”
What have Canadian politicians said?
While most Canadian politicians have pushed back against the prospect of Trump’s 25-percent tariffs — saying such a move would incur job losses and spark an economic downturn — a group of right-wing premiers have argued the US president-elect raises “valid” concerns about the border.
“The federal government needs to take the situation at our border seriously,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a social media post this week. He has called on Canada to impose retaliatory tariffs against the US should Trump move forward with his plans.
Francois Legault, the right-wing premier of Quebec who has urged a harsher border crackdown amid an influx of asylum seekers into the French-speaking province, said he requested a “detailed plan” from the federal government “to better secure the borders”.
“That would limit illegal entries into Quebec and avoid Mr Trump’s 25% tariffs,” Legault wrote on X. Last month, he also suggested Canada should forcibly transfer tens of thousands of asylum seekers out of Quebec to other parts of the country.
The pressure on Trudeau, who has been in power since 2015, comes as the Canadian prime minister has seen his popularity plummet amid a housing crisis and soaring costs of living.
Recent polls show his Liberals trailing far behind the opposition Conservative Party ahead of a federal election that must be held before late October 2025.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has seized on the border issue to criticise the prime minister. “Justin Trudeau broke the border,” Poilievre told reporters on Thursday. “All the chaos at our border is the result of Justin Trudeau.”
What have human rights advocates said?
Julia Sande, human rights law and policy campaigner at Amnesty International Canada, said the US president-elect’s comments this week about the US-Canada border were “intentionally vague” and unclear.
“There’s mention of people crossing the border. Are we talking about asylum seekers? He talks about illegal activities; obviously, crossing to seek asylum is not illegal,” Sande told Al Jazeera.
“And it’s because of the Safe Third Country Agreement that people are forced to cross between ports of entry to seek safety,” she added.
“It’s one thing if we’re talking about the flow of drugs, but when it includes people and you’re using words like ‘illegal aliens’, I would hope that politicians would push back against that.”
Alex Neve, a professor of international human rights law at the University of Ottawa, also said it was “deeply troubling” to see Canadian leaders “falling in line with Trump’s inflamed, bullying narrative about the border”.
“Suddenly priority number one in Canada is ‘safeguarding’ the Canada/US border, because Donald Trump has said it must be so. Doesn’t seem to matter that the numbers don’t even remotely bear out his hateful fearmongering,” Neve wrote on social media.
“This hyperbolic talk of hordes of illegal migrants, increasingly spouted by governments around the world, inevitably bodes ill for refugees and migrants, with truly life and death consequences, and buying into it makes us part of the problem.”