A Haitian family separated on the border of Quebec-United States this spring due to what an immigration lawyer calls a “legal ruling”, some fear could become a broader problem as more migrants flee from the United States to Canada.
The family tried to enter Canada at the official land crossing in Lacolle, which, according to immigration documents.
After reviewing his case, the officers of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) allowed only the father because he has a close relative in Canada. His pregnant wife and his seven -year -old daughter were rejected.
Three weeks later, facing complications of pregnancy, the mother paid the smugglers almost $ 4,000 to cross the border with the melted snow to meet with the father.
“The border agent should never have separated that family,” said Paule Robitaille, an immigration lawyer based in Montreal who has been working in his case.
Defenders and lawyers fear that family separation can become more common as more migrants in the United States seek asylum in Canada through exceptions described in a bilateral agreement between the United States and Canada, and border services face pressure to limit the number of arrivals.
The Canada Border Services Agency says it registered more than 3,000 asylum applications at the crossroads in July 2025, compared to 600 last July.
Solo’s smuggling option, says Father
The father says that the family decided to come to Canada after the president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened Finish a humanitarian program His predecessor Joe Biden created to prevent the people of Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from being deported due to agitation in their countries.
It is under that program that the wife and daughter of the man arrived in the United States in 2024, three years after he claimed asylum there.
CBC has agreed not to name the family due to the threats that the couple has faced in Haiti related to denouncing corruption and sexual violence through their work.
After the mother and daughter were rejected at the Canadian border in March, an organization of migrants helped pay a hotel room in Plattsburgh, New York, while working to find legal paths so that the family met, according to Frantz André, a defender of asylum seekers who have helped the family.
Finally, said the father in an interview, his wife met someone in Plattsburgh who told him that he could pay the smugglers to enter Canada. If he managed to evade the authorities for 14 days, he could remain in Canada under an exception to the safe agreement of the third country (STCA).
The Stca, which was In the extended scope in 2023 After the pressure on the Canadian government to limit asylum: prevents people from making a claim for asylum at a crossroads of Canada-United States. It establishes that asylum seekers should seek protection in the first country in which they terrify, the United States or Canada.
Current exceptions to STCA include Close relative In Canada, being an unaccompanied minor, or was not detected in the country for 14 days.
On the border, the CBSA discovered that the father could enter Canada due to his uncle in BC, but also found him not eligible to claim asylum because he had already done so in the United States, according to an immigration document signed by a border agent.
The document says that the father could not act as what is called an “anchor” in relation to his wife and son, a decision of two immigration lawyers interviewed by CBC, they say that he should not have led to the separation of the family.
The father is now only eligible to request a risk assessment prior to elimination (PRRA), where immigration officials determine whether a person is at risk of persecution, danger of torture and risk for life if returned to their country. Success rates on this path are significantly lower than for asylum applicants, who have access to an immigration audience and refugee board.
Beyond the Plattsburgh hotel room, the mother knew that detention and deportation at the hands of the application of immigration and customs (ICE) of the United States probably expected her already her daughter. She decided to risk the crossroads.
“We realized that it was our only option,” said the father.
Trembling and soaked
The mother and daughter were taken by car at night to the edge of a forest near the border in early April, where they began to walk with a group of seven or eight migrants.
The group walked for hours through the forest through small river routes and in melted snow. Once on the other side, the migrants were introduced into a truck that headed towards Montreal, the father reported. His wife, who now has seven months in a high -risk pregnancy that required surgery, refused to give an interview, saying that the details of the cross were too annoying to visit again.
CBC has seen immigration documents belonging to the couple that coincide with the story that the father shared in an interview.
“My daughter fell and was covered with scratches. They had to turn around several times,” after making wrong turns, said the father, adding that there was a baby in the group.
The mother and daughter were trembling and soaked when the father picked them up. The family stayed with a friend in the city for 14 days before heading to the British Columbia Quoter Valley to meet with the father’s uncle.
The family now has weekly records with immigration officials, but are in a kind of limbo. They are protected from deportation to Haiti because Canada has issued a moratorium on removals to the country, but they are struggling to obtain the state that allows them to work here.
In the United States, the father who has a university degree in Haiti worked in social services.
“They are … very, very vulnerable,” said Robitaille, his lawyer. “Everything is very complicated now.”
Restrict access to asylum
In general, the close exception to the STCA allows families to enter together; Whatever the person who has the relative in Canada becomes his spouse and presenter of children, said Maureen Silcoff, an immigration lawyer with headquarters in Toronto and former decision maker at the Immigration Board and refugees in Canada (IRB).
“The people who return to the border in this type of circumstances are subject to what I would call a legal failure,” said Silcoff, referring to the situation of the Haitian family.
She believes that the fault is a supervision in the definition of relative anchor described in the Segurial Country Agreement, which does not include the applicants for the evaluation of risks prior to the withdrawal (PRRA) as the father.
It is a complicated technicalism that could prevent people with valid reasons from looking for protection in Canada to be able to consider their cases, according to Robitaille and Silcoff.
Border agents are required under a 2023 Decision of the Supreme Court of Canada To consider the options, he called “security valves” that could, for example, prevent a family from dividing.
“There is no rational reason why the family member of [PRRA applicants] It should not be allowed to come to Canada, “said Silcoff.
But Robitalle, the family’s lawyer, cares about the failure could be a way for CBSA agents to reduce the number of arrivals to the border at a time when they can be under scrutiny amid tensions between the United States and Canada to squeeze immigration and border control.
“Do agents have more pressure to be stricter because there are more tickets? Probably,” said Robitaille, who plans to appeal CBSA’s decision.
CBSA did not provide an answer to CBC questions until the deadline about whether agents are encouraged to avoid separating families, or what procedures the agency has to prevent that from happening.
A 2017 document entitled National Directive for detention or Housing of Minors Published on the CBSA website establishes that the agency should not separate families, except in extremely rare cases. It is not clear how this applies when the child remains with a father, but not both.
There have been growing calls for Canada to reconsider their position that the United States is a safe country for refugees, since Trump ordered ice agents to make generalized incursions, arrests and deportations, even to third countries, such as a prison in El Salvador, where Torture reports.
Until now, Canada has tried to tighten asylum rights at its border. In June, the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney presented the Strong Borders Law, a high -scope bill that would further restrict asylum claims on the land border of Canada.
