In many ways, Roxham Road has served as a perfect symbol of the peaceful ties between two countries. The road winds through woods in upstate New York and ends in a dead end just a few yards away from Canada's Quebec province. A few yards into Canada, the road resumes into the predominantly French-speaking territory where it's called Chemin Roxham.

Today, however, the interrupted roadway has become a flashpoint for the intersection of Western worries over immigration and refugees' fears of being forcibly returned to desperate living conditions in their native lands.

Thousands of asylum seekers have crossed the U.S. border into Canada in recent months, spurred by fears over possible deportation from the U.S. after receiving misleading – and often blatantly false – social media messages that the northern country's doors are open to all migrants. Many are Haitians, unknowingly abandoning a country that recently extended their legal residency for one that shuttered the program a year ago.

"The vast majority of people are coming [at Roxham Road]," says Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Erique Gasse. "You see the image on TV – just walk out of the bus or the taxi and you just walk for a couple of seconds, and you come to Canada to get arrested."

For many migrants, being arrested is the key step to claiming asylum in Canada. Since the beginning of August, the Canada Border Services Agency has processed more than 5,000 asylum seekers at the Saint-Bernard de Lacolle port of entry less than 10 miles from Roxham Road – nearly half of the 11,370 claimants the agency processed across the country in all of 2016. The agency is averaging 100 asylum claimants processed every day, according to spokesperson Jacqueline Roby, and even more are arriving daily.

At a news conference earlier in August, RCMP spokesperson Claude Castonguay added: "They're unprecedented; we've never seen those numbers."

More than 80 percent of the migrants arriving into Quebec are Haitians, according to the RCMP. The influx has put a strain on Canada's immigration and refugee services, particularly in the city of Montreal, where the vast majority of Canada's Haitians live.

Canadian authorities have had to adopt temporary measures to accommodate the surge of irregular border crossings in recent weeks. Asylum seekers are being housed in the Olympic Stadium in Montreal and a 500-person tent village in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle – adjacent to the U.S. border town of Champlain, New York – while they wait for some shelters to become less crowded and others to open.

Refugees mingle outside Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec. The stadium has been turned into a shelter for hundreds of refugees who have flooded across the Canada/US border in recent weeks. (Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images)

Officials say most of the migrants claim to be afraid of deportation from the U.S., citing President Donald Trump's immigration policies. The Trump administration plans to curb legal immigration by 50 percent over the next decade, and has indicated that Haitians living in the U.S. with temporary protected status could have that status revoked next year.

The U.S. shielded more than 50,000 Haitians from deportation after the devastating 2010 earthquake that left 300,000 people dead. But senior Department of Homeland Security officials said in May that conditions in Haiti are improving and the program could be suspended in January 2018. The DHS memo encouraged Haitians to prepare to return home if their protected status is not extended.

The decision has driven thousands of Haitians across the northern border in recent weeks, many not realizing they may face the same immigration difficulties in Canada, which also protected Haitians from deportation after the earthquake but has since ended the program .

"Most of the people who are coming are not aware of the process for seeking asylum here in Canada – at all," says Chantal Ismé, vice president of the board of directors of La Maison d'Haïti, a community center that helps immigrants in Montreal. "And it's a shock when they get to the border and find out they have to go through a long process that is pretty uncertain to their stay in Canada."

The Safe Third Country Agreement , a pact between Washington and Ottawa that requires refugees to seek asylum in the first safe country they arrive in, means people who have already entered the U.S. can't seek asylum at an official Canadian border crossing point. But migrants have realized that if they can make it past the border without being spotted at an illegal crossing point, such as Roxham Road at the Champlain–Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border, they can request asylum from within Canada.

As the number of crossings at Roxham Road has increased, though, border authorities have begun patrolling there in greater numbers. In June, police arrested just 781 people at the illegal crossing point, but by July the number of arrests had swelled to 2,984.

"When they cross the border, they commit a crime, so we arrest them, and we do some checks to know if these are good or bad people," Gasse says. "If they are bad people, they're going to prison. Most of them are just normal people, if I can say so, families coming to Canada."

The increase in border crossings has sparked protests by so-called far-right groups such as La Meute – or Wolf Pack – which demonstrated in Quebec City earlier in August, decrying what they say is "illegal immigration," Canadian media reported.

When a migrant crosses the border illegally and is intercepted, they are brought to a border services officer, who conducts background checks, and then to an immigration official, who determines whether the migrant is eligible to make an asylum claim. From there, they wait for a hearing with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, which ultimately decides whether they qualify for asylum, according to Nancy Chan, communications adviser for Canada's immigration department.

"If an individual is not found to need Canada's protection following due process, individuals may be returned to their home country," Chan said via email. "This is all being carried out according to regular processes, with the safety and security of all Canadians as a top priority."

Of the 9,171 asylum claims heard in Canada in 2016, just 410 were Haitians, and while two-thirds of all of the claimants were granted asylum, just half of those from Haiti were accepted. With the influx of migrants this year, thousands will likely be sent back to Haiti unless they can prove they will face persecution in their home country.

"Some of them have been in the States for a couple years now, some of them as far as seven years," says Ismé. "And then the possibility to go back to Haiti frightens them … and that's why I guess they believe in anything, and they're desperate. They're ready to buy anything anybody tells them, as long as it's not going back to Haiti."

In Haiti, plagued by chronic hunger, poverty and unemployment, prospects are bleak for those who return to what is one of the world's poorest countries, according to the World Bank. More than 6 million people live on less than $2.42 per day in Haiti, and the country's most recent natural disaster, Hurricane Matthew in October 2016, has stunted economic recovery, according to the World Bank . More than two-thirds of the population does not hold a formal job , and 12 percent of children under 5 are malnourished.

Hearing that the immigration and asylum processes are not as easy as they thought can be devastating for the migrants, Ismé says, adding that most of the people entering Canada are 20 to 30 years old and have no desire to return to the country of their childhoods.

"We find that some of them are in real despair because they're leaving one uncertainty for another uncertainty, and it's not easy to cope with," she says. "They have no real tie to Haiti anymore … and they come here and they feel lost."

Canada's welcoming image has likely contributed to a rapidly spreading rumor that the country has an open-door policy for asylum-seekers, Ismé says. Most of the rumors are spread through social media and messaging platforms Facebook and WhatsApp, prompting Canada's immigration department to repeatedly post on its Facebook page – in both English and Haitian Creole – to discourage illegal entries into the country and warn against misinformation about asylum application procedures.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Haitian community leaders and the newly formed Intergovernmental Task Force on Irregular Migration in Montreal on Aug. 23 to discuss how best to respond to the surge of migrants.

"Canada is an open and welcoming society," Trudeau tweeted after the meeting. "But just as we welcome & encourage newcomers, we are also a country of laws."

Trudeau announced via Twitter that the Canadian government would establish a new temporary shelter in Cornwall, Ontario, hire more staff to review asylum requests and increase communication with U.S. officials.

Canada is an open and welcoming society. But just as we welcome & encourage newcomers, we are also a country of laws. — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) August 23, 2017

Canada's immigration department has more than tripled its daily processing output in its Montreal office, according to Chan. She added that department officials are also visiting shelters to speak with asylum seekers and streamlining application procedures.

"Given the influx of asylum claimants, there are currently delays in holding eligibility interviews," Chan said via email. "Through these measures, we are working to reduce the wait times for eligibility hearings from a few months to a few weeks, after which eligible claims are referred to the independent Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB)."

The migrant influx has also put a strain on La Maison d'Haïti. The center, which once received 10 to 20 people daily, now sees between 40 to 50 new arrivals each day. La Maison d'Haïti helps them connect with lawyers, apply for work permits and find housing. Ismé says that along with other Haitian groups in the area, La Maison d'Haïti also advocates for migrants' rights and speaks for them in discussions with the federal government.