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WASHINGTON—They tried. Two senators, one Republican and one Democrat, prodded Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary on Wednesday to spell out his concerns about America’s northern border.

John Kelly wouldn’t much budge. His unexpected answer: Canada is fantastic, and the northern border should get less restrictive.

“The absolutely great news story in the northern border is that we have Canada there. To say the least: a friend, an ally,” Kelly, a retired Marine general, told the Senate Homeland Security committee.

“The good news story up there is the Canadians. Their law enforcement, their commitment,” he continued. “I would say, actually, this might surprise you . . . I’d like to see the northern border to be even thinner, if you will, so that the movement, safely and securely, of commerce and people can be even streamlined more.”

Kelly did say he was monitoring a “little” recent increase in the number of Mexicans crossing illegally from Canada. On the whole, though, his words were among the most positive uttered by a senior U.S. security official about the border since the tightening that followed the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It is not clear whether Kelly’s views are widely shared within the Trump administration. The president and his inner circle have frequently discarded or simply declined to seek the advice of his cabinet secretaries.

Still, Kelly’s praise offered a measure of reassurance amid Canadian concerns about the impact of Trump on their travel and trade.

The NDP is criticizing a Liberal bill to expand border “pre-clearance” on Canadian soil, arguing that the Trump-era U.S. should not be given expanded powers over Canadians. And the Wall Street Journal reported this week that Kelly’s department is considering a series of significant new intrusions on the privacy of people seeking to enter.

The Trump administration has declined to follow through on a number of potential policies it has floated through the media in such a manner. Canadians directly affected by border policy say they are unsure what might happen next.

“What’s overhanging the situation now is uncertainty and the unknown,” said David Bradley, president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance. “Nobody’s hitting the panic button, but there is uncertainty.”

At present, there appears to be a gap between public perception and border reality.

The inauguration of the bellicose “America First” president was followed by a spate of media reports about Canadians turned away at U.S. crossings. But these anecdotes have not proven representative of a trend. According to statistics from Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, the U.S. deemed about 1,200 people from Canada inadmissible this February — down from about 1,700 under Barack Obama the February prior, a 29-per-cent decrease.

Goodale’s staff did not provide a total number of U.S. visits, so the proportion of Canadians declined in those months could not be calculated. Nonetheless: according to travellers and experts alike, there is no evidence of any lasting change in border operations since Trump took office.

“Things, at least at our border region, are kind of moving along business as usual,” said Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University, 90 minutes from Vancouver. The only difference, she said, has been the level of “speculation and uncertainty.”

“And that’s not to say that that doesn’t have a real impact,” she said.

The uncertainty appears particularly acute among Muslims. Though Canadian citizens were not included in Trump’s ban on travellers from six Muslim-majority countries, that policy and his general hostility to the community have prompted some Canadian Muslims to avoid non-essential travel.

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“People who don’t have to go are deciding not to go,” said Amira Elghawaby, spokesperson for the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

She said the organization has received accounts of Muslims who have had problems crossing. Others have travelled regularly under Trump without any new difficulties. More data is needed, she said, to determine what is happening.

The Journal article raised new alarms around the world. The story reported that the administration is thinking about fulfilling Trump’s promise of “extreme vetting” by forcing visa applicants to hand over their social media passwords and their phones, and by asking travellers about their beliefs on social issues like “the treatment of women in society.”

The changes, the Journal reported, could even apply to the 38 allies in the “visa waiver program” that allows travellers to make short-term visits without a visa.

Canada, however, is in a category separate from the waiver program, and Canadians could conceivably get special treatment. The Canadian government successfully lobbied for privileged access under Trump’s travel ban, which has been paused by the courts.

“We do not comment on policy discussions taking place in other countries,” said Goodale spokesperson Scott Bardsley.

U.S. border officers already have a “huge amount of discretionary authority,” Trautman said. And, in fact, they already sometimes ask travellers for access to their phones, laptops and social media accounts, though civil liberties advocates dispute their authority to do so.

Searches of cellphones rose from about 5,000 in 2015 to about 25,000 in 2016. They have skyrocketed in 2017, NBC reported, to 5,000 in February alone.

“This is nothing new,” Kelly said. He said officers make such requests of only “very small numbers” of visitors, and only for a reason.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, though, told Kelly her “hair is on fire” over the idea of turning the practice into widespread policy.

“All of the bad guys are going to just lie. I don’t get how we get anything out of it. Except damage,” she said.

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