This week I published an article, months in the works, that followed the dramatic efforts of a senior nurse and the mother of two who had been living as an unauthorized immigrant in the United States for 22 years, as she tried to legally join her Canadian brother here.
[Read: She Tried to Leave America. She Entered an Immigration Hall of Mirrors.]
The woman, Rahel Negassi, originally from Eritrea, had been working and living in the United States as a cardiac transplant nurse for major hospitals in Michigan and later Maryland.
After President Trump’s re-election, she prepared, with the help of lawyers, to come to Canada by organizing her documents and obtaining DNA tests proving her relationship to her brother. She even applied to start the process of having her nursing credentials recognized in Ontario.
But her meeting with the Canada Border Services Agency at Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, Ontario, in June went terribly wrong. After hours of interviews (I obtained the transcripts), the Canadian officer rejected her and handed her to back to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Then, the U.S. agency flew her to Texas and booked her for deportation.
I conducted dozens of hours of interviews with Rahel, even while she was detained, as well as with her family members and her Canadian lawyer, Heather Neufeld. Rahel’s story, and the way it ends, is here.
I want to share a few important things I learned through my reporting about the current enforcement of the “safe third country” agreement between the United States and Canada that did not make it into the article.
The treaty stipulates that a person who has sought asylum in the United States cannot apply in Canada, and vice versa. A very few exceptions exist, the most prominent being that asylum seekers may be allowed to enter Canada if they have close Canadian relatives.
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Interviews with nongovernmental organizations and lawyers suggest that border services officers are applying more stringent scrutiny to people arriving to join close relatives in Canada. The officers are particularly questioning the authenticity of documents. Some of these efforts seem to go too far, with officers dismissing authentic documents (such as Rahel’s DNA tests, which had been conducted at a government-approved lab), with dire consequences.
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Several cases of asylum seekers who say they have been wrongly returned, including a number of families with close relatives in Canada, have reached the Federal Court. Lawyers for these asylum seekers claim that border officers handed their clients back to the U.S. authorities in violation of current rules. In some instances, these people were arrested by ICE, including Rahel. Canadian government agencies do not release information on individual legal cases, citing privacy concerns.
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C.B.S.A. officers do not appear to be acknowledging that the situation faced by asylum seekers in the United States if Canada returns them has changed since Mr. Trump’s return to power, even as his administration advertises its harshness.
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Canadian border services agency data shared with The New York Times shows returns to the United States from official ports of entry under the agreement have increased only slightly. These are happening very quickly now, often within three hours, not giving relatives time to react, lawyers told me. And it’s what happened to Rahel, too.
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Through Nov. 24 of this year, C.B.S.A. returned 2,582 people to the U.S. under the “safe third country” agreement. The number was 2,460 for all of 2024. But returns are 43 percent higher for people who enter Canada outside official crossing points: 1,409 this year through Nov. 24, versus 984 for all of 2024.
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Experts believe it is a matter of time until a major case questioning the basis of the “safe third country” agreement — that the U.S. is, in fact, safe for asylum seekers — is brought before Canada’s Supreme Court. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that the agreement was in line with the Constitution.
This fresh reporting from the U.S.-Canadian border highlights that Canada is becoming stricter, too, as Mr. Trump cracks down on immigration in the United States, and that some practices may result in violations that cause harm to individuals and cast doubt on the viability of the “safe third country” agreement.
Trans Canada
This week’s Trans Canada section was compiled by Ian Austen, a Canada correspondent in Ottawa.
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It was an announcement that Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, said could have not been made a year ago. This week, she signed an agreement with Prime Minister Mark Carney under which the federal government conditionally agreed to fast-track approval of an oil pipeline from Alberta to a port on the coast of British Columbia, lifted some environmental laws in the province and offered to end a tanker ship ban. Alberta, in turn, pledged to reform and retain carbon pricing for large industries and committed to carbon capture and storage for the oil sands. The announcement immediately provoked a backlash from First Nations, the government of British Columbia and environmentalists while prompting the federal heritage minister to quit the cabinet.
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Mr. Carney, in what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgment that a trade deal with Mr. Trump is unlikely, introduced measures to protect the steel and forestry industries this week.
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Throughout his long career, Thomas King, the author of several best-selling books about Indigenous people and issues, identified as part Cherokee. This week, he said that, contrary to what he had always believed, he had no Indigenous ancestors.
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Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, has ordered American diplomats in Canada and elsewhere to emphasize the effects of criminal acts by immigrants in their host nations to encourage greater restrictions on immigration. The officials have been told to file reports when governments appear to be overly supportive of immigrants.
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Lauren McCarthy traveled to Vancouver to report on how Mr. Trump’s tariffs and his belittling of Canada’s sovereignty have given a boost to British Columbia’s winemakers.
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Penny Oleksiak, the Canadian swimmer who has won seven Olympic medals, has been suspended from competitions for two years after failing to make herself available for drug testing three times.
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Myriam Belzile-Maguire, the president and a co-founder of the Maguire shoe company in Montreal, has paused an expansion in the United States because of Mr. Trump’s tariffs. And a Mexican chocolatier, after cutting off direct sales to the United States, now directs American customers to retailers in Canada.
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Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, appeared exasperated by the escalation of a protest in Ontario’s legislature this week. After one protester taunted a guard trying to remove the man, Mr. Ford told him, “Go find a job, buddy.”
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Margaret Atwood’s “Book of Lives” is among The Times’s 100 notable books of 2025.
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For T Magazine’s Admiration Society, Sheila Heti, a novelist from Toronto, and Rose Byrne, an actor from Australia, met for the first time during a video call last month.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the country.
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Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the country.
The post Fresh Reporting on Asylum Seekers at the U.S.-Canadian Border appeared first on New York Times.
