SAINT-BERNARD-DE-LACOLLE, QUE.—For a family of asylum seekers from Sudan, the path into Canada on Friday morning was a long, windswept road 60 kilometres south of Montreal.

It led past warning signs that the territory of the United States was ending. The hope of a new country lay ahead.

The path continued through a rocky, snow-covered ditch and past an orange marker delineating the border. On the other side, three RCMP officers waited to arrest the parents and three children.

“You cannot cross from here. It’s illegal. You will be arrested,” a female Mountie warned from the Canadian side of border.

“It’s not a problem,” the father of three replied in halting English.

“You’ve been told. It’s illegal and you will be arrested, and all your family will be arrested,” the officer said again.

She was firm, but she appeared to be reciting a well-rehearsed line. Both actors knew their roles well.

“OK,” the man said, handing himself over for arrest.

This was the scene at 9 a.m. at the foot of Roxham Rd., a severed street in the Quebec town of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle that once connected the two countries and is now one of the busiest holes in the lengthy Canada-U.S. border.

The family was one of three groups that the Star witnessed illegally crossing the border into Canada on Friday. But they were just another handful in what immigration lawyers, border-town officials and refugee service providers say is a significant spike in asylum seekers who are attempting to circumvent the 2004 Safe Third Country Agreement, a deal between Canada and the United States that forces claimants to make their demand with the first country in which they arrive.

It was a measure intended to ease the processing of refugee claimants in both countries. But in President Donald Trump’s United States, many now fear that the promise of a crackdown on refugees will result in them being forced to return to the countries they have fled.

“We have clients who openly tell us that after the declaration of President Trump that he was going to crack down on illegal immigration, that he was going to go after people from certain countries, they left the United States to come to Canada and seek refugee status,” said Montreal immigration lawyer Stéphane Handfield.

The recent scenes of frostbitten horror from migrants entering Canada across the prairie border in Emerson, Man., have shown the physical risks people will endure to get to Canada.

But what has been playing out over the last few months at the foot of a dead-end road in this small town illustrates just how well organized the movement of people really is.

For the Sudanese family who stumbled across the border Friday morning, it was an awkward march as they lugged their six suitcases, two purses, two backpacks and three plastic, J.C. Penney bags into Canada. When the father gave himself up, he was handcuffed and placed in the back of the police truck. The others — two younger boys and two adult women — were left struggling with the baggage.

Airline luggage tags indicated that they had flown out of Doha, Qatar on Monday of this week and arrived in Washington the following day, Feb. 7.

Somewhere along the route, it appeared that they had picked up brand new winter coats, boots, gloves and hats better suited to the place they hope will be their new home.

Only one thing seemed out of place: the white, silk scarf that the younger of the two women wore in the minus-14 C weather. The female officer who attended to her delicately wrapped the garment around her neck before handcuffing her and leading her into custody.

Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, only those asylum seekers who have family already living in Canada or those who have already been refused refugee status in the United States will be considered for asylum if they show up at Canadian land border posts.

But those who cross illegally are exploiting a loophole in the law — the conditions of the Safe Third Country Agreement do not apply to people who are already in Canada when they make a claim for asylum.

The Canada Border Service Agency will not reveal how many asylum seekers are crossing into Canada illegally. But overall, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people seeking asylum in recent months.

In 2016, there were 2,529 asylum claims made at Quebec’s land border crossings, according to statistics from the agency. That figure averages out to 211 claimants each month.

But the numbers started to climb dramatically this fall. There were 289 refugee claimants in October, 369 in November and 591 in December.

Montreal immigration lawyer Éric Taillefer said his caseload of refugee claimants began to increase noticeably in December.

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“Before I had one from time to time and now in December and early January there have been many,” he said, adding that most of his clients are from coming from Eritrea, Iraq and Libya.

“These are people who have fears of returning to their country of origin,” said Handfield.

Most of his clients are people who were already living in the United States, but others obtain tourist visas to travel to the U.S. and use that as the entry point for their trek to Canada. Despite American fears about border security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Handfield said it remains easier to obtain the necessary permissions to enter the U.S. than those required to enter Canada.

That seemed to be the case Friday morning with a man who travelled along Roxham Rd. to the Canada-U.S. border in a taxi from Plattsburgh, N.Y. He was followed by a United States Border Patrol officer who asked to see the man’s papers when he got out of the cab during his last moments on American soil.

After a quick check, the agent told the man that he was legally in the United States and then warned him that what he was about to do would get him arrested.

“I can’t stop you from crossing,” the agent said. He returned to his truck and the man descended into the ditch, emerging in Canada a few steps later.

He would not say from which country he had come, but he passed his stuffed black backpack to the RCMP officer, and the airline baggage tags indicated that he had travelled on Turkish Airways from Istanbul to New York’s JFK airport.

He willingly crossed his hands behind his back to be handcuffed and led away.

Ten minutes earlier, a man and woman in their 30s who were dressed fashionably but not so seasonably, had pulled up to the border in a taxi with just a carry-on suitcase and a blue plastic bag bearing the name “Hudson News,” an airport retail shop.

“They don’t even try to hide. They want to be picked up by the RCMP,” said François Doré, a retired police officer with the Sûreté du Québec, who lives on Roxham Rd., not far from the American border.

Handfield and Taillefer, the immigration lawyers, both say there is strong evidence that people are relying on smugglers to get them out of their home countries and up to the Canadian border.

“They demand large sums of money. In certain cases, people have explained that . . . . They’re paying $10,000 a head,” said Handfield.

Taillefer said he has heard of dollar figures ranging from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.

“For sure the people don’t want to tell us exactly who helped them and they might not know themselves. Sometimes they only know the contact as ‘Peter,’ as in, ‘Peter helped us and charged us a certain amount and told us where to cross,’ ” he said.

A number of groups that advocate for the rights of refugees have urged the Canadian government to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement because the U.S. under the Trump administration is no longer a safe place for asylum seekers.

Handfield said scrapping the deal would also allow Canadian authorities to normalize what is becoming an unmanageable flood of people crossing into Canada and remove the incentive for smugglers and other criminals who are getting rich off of refugees.

“If we do that, then we can start asking real questions about those people who come across the border illegally, because those who do so may have a real interest in hiding what they’re doing,” he said.

Doré, the retired Quebec police officer, agreed that the people passing into Canada along Roxham Rd. should be receiving a hand-up from the country rather than a being greeted with handcuffs.

“These people are fleeing horrible situations in their countries in the hope of finding a better life here. Is that a problem?” he asked. “Canada is a welcoming country. Are we capable of welcoming these people? Fundamentally I think we are.”

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