Rare migrants on US-Canada border at heart of Trump demands to Ottawa

STANSTEAD, Canada: Fresh footprints cut across the thick blanket of snow outside a small white house near the line dividing Canada and the United States.

For Canadian border officer Keven Rouleau, it´s a clear sign of illegal migration.

“They regularly run across the border,” he told AFP, which shadowed him on patrol.

In 2024, these southbound migrants numbered 21,000 -- a drop in the ocean compared to the 1.5 million intercepted on the US border with Mexico.

Migrants who cross from Canada into the United States in the winter face dangerous conditions, with deep snow and high winds, and are often forced to abandon their vehicles to proceed on foot.

They are sometimes only lightly dressed and wearing “simple sneakers in 20 centimeters of snow,” Rouleau said of the migrants, who sometimes hide under trees to avoid detection.

Canadian officers with bullhorns and powerful searchlights give chase, seeking to stop them from crossing the border, according to Rouleau.

Since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in a blaze of executive actions and rhetoric on immigration, the border has been thrust into the spotlight.

On Saturday he made good on his threats to impose tariffs on Canada -- and Mexico -- over the flow of migrants, as well as the smuggling of lethal drugs.

Canadian exports to the United States will now face a 25 percent tariff, although energy resources from Canada will have a lower 10 percent levy.

The meandering border between the neighbours is the longest in the world at 8,891-kms long. It is largely open without significant fencing and crisscrossed by thousands of miles of dense forests and farmland, and only a few rural roads.

Rouleau patrols a 200-mile stretch of the border in the province of Quebec.

Ten officers are on duty around the clock, either in vehicles to detect suspicious footprints in winter, or by monitoring feeds from surveillance cameras. They also field reports of suspicious activity from the local community.

Since Trump started to rail against Ottawa´s handling of border security, Canada has been at pains to insist that its frontier is nothing like the US border with Mexico.

Nonetheless Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly rolled out a Can$1.3 billion ($894 million) border security plan.