A line of asylum-seekers who identified themselves as from Haiti wait to enter into Canada from Roxham Road in Champlain, New York.

Grappling with an influx of asylum-seekers fleeing possible deportation in the US, Canada is now building a temporary camp just north of the Vermont border to house hundreds of refugees.

Canadian soldiers on Wednesday began setting up tents equipped with lighting and heating in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, a municipality in Quebec, to accommodate up to 500 people, many of them Haitian asylum-seekers in US who fear losing their deportation protections under the Trump administration.

“The Canadian Armed Forces is aware of the difficult situation that is requiring significant resources of Canada Border Services Agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and other partners in the area,” said Evan Koronewski, a spokesperson for Canada’s Department of National Defence.

Last week, Quebec’s immigration minister, Kathleen Weil, told reporters that 150 people were seeking asylum each day, up from 50 a day in the first half of July, prompting the head of the union representing Canada’s border agents to call the influx "a national crisis."



The flow of people has showed no signs of slowing. In Montreal, where the government was forced to use the city's Olympic Stadium and a network of shelters to house the newcomers, officials told The Star the number is now between 250 and 300 people a day.

Judith Gadbois-St-Cyr, spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency in the Quebec region, on Thursday said the tents were not a "camp" set-up but a temporary shelter against the elements so the agency can continue to process asylum seekers.

“To clarify, the government has not ‘called the Army in,’” Gadbois-St-Cyr said in a statement. “The Government Operations Centre has been activated to ensure the ongoing coordination of the Government of Canada’s response to the increased numbers of asylum seekers arriving in the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle area.”