The family paid the smugglers to meet after the separation from the APBS at the Quebec border

A Haitian family was separated at the border of Quebec-American this spring because of what an immigration lawyer calls for a “legal problem”, a fear could become a broader problem while more and more migrants flee the United States in Canada.

The family tried to enter Canada at the official level of land in Lacolle, Quebec, in March, according to immigration documents.

After examining their case, agents of the Canada Border Services Agency (ASBS) only authorized the father because he has a close relative in Canada. His pregnant wife and seven -year -old daughter were turned back.

Three weeks later, faced with complications of pregnancy, the mother paid the smugglers nearly $ 4,000 to pass herself and her daughter through the border on foot while melting the snow to find the father.

“The border agent should never have separated this family,” said Paule Robitaille, an immigration lawyer based in Montreal who worked on their case.

Defenders and lawyers fear that the separation of families can become more common because more migrants in the United States are looking for asylum in Canada thanks to exceptions described in a bilateral agreement between the United States and Canada, and border services are facing pressure to limit the number of arrivals.

Look | More asylum seekers appear to the border of Lacolle, in Quebec, this summer:

Refugees’ claims increase in Lacolle, to Qu., Border despite an overall drop in asylum seekers entering Canada

The Canada Border Services Agency claims to have recorded more than 3,000 asylum requests at the crossing in July 2025, against 600 last July.

Smuggling option only, says father

The father says that the family decided to come to Canada after US President Donald Trump put an end to a humanitarian program His predecessor Joe Biden created to prevent people from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from being expelled because of the troubles in their country.

It was under this program that the man and the man of the man arrived in the United States in 2024, three years after claiming asylum.

CBC has agreed not to appoint the family due to threats to which the couple was confronted in Haiti linked to the denunciation of corruption and sexual violence through their work.

After the mother and the daughter were turned back to the Canadian border in March, an organization of migrants’ rights helped pay a hotel room in Plattsburgh, NY, while they were working to find legal paths so that the family was reunited, according to Frantz André, a defender of asylum seekers who helped the family.

Finally, the father said in an interview, his wife met someone at Plattsburgh who told him that she could pay the smugglers to enter Canada. If she managed to escape the authorities for 14 days, she could stay in Canada in an exception to the sure agreement of the third party (STCA).

The STCA – which was Extended in the scope in 2023 Following pressure on the Canadian government to limit asylum – prevents people from making an asylum complaint during a Canada -US land crossing. He indicates that asylum seekers must seek protection in the first country in which they land, the United States or Canada.

Current exceptions to the STCA include Have a member of the nearby family In Canada, being an unaccompanied minor, or without being detected in the country for 14 days.

At the border, the CBSA noted that the father could enter Canada because of his uncle in British Columbia, but also found it ineligible to claim asylum because it had already done so in the United States, according to an immigration document signed by a border agent.

The document indicates that the father could therefore not act as what is called an “anchor” in relation to his wife and his child – a decision that two lawyers of the immigration questioned by CBC say should not have led to the separation of the family.

The father is now only eligible for a risk assessment before abotation (PRRA) – where immigration officials determine if a person risks persecuting, danger of torture and risk for life if he has returned to their country. The success rates on this path are significantly lower than those of asylum seekers, who have access to an audience of the Immigration and Refugees Board of Directors.

Beyond the Plattsburgh hotel chamber, the mother knew detention and expulsion in the hands of US immigration and Customs Shall (ICE) was probably waiting for her and her daughter. She decided to risk crossing on foot.

“We realized that it was our only option,” said the father.

Trembling and wet soaking

The mother and daughter were taken by car at night to the edge of a forest near the border in early April where they started walking with a group of seven or eight other migrants.

The group worked for hours through the woods through the small navigable lanes and to melt the snow. Once through, the migrants were inaugurated in a van which accelerated towards Montreal, said the father. His wife, who is now seven months after high -risk pregnancy that required surgery, refused to give an interview, saying that the details of the crossing were too overwhelming to review.

CBC has seen immigration documents belonging to the couple which correspond to the story that the father shared in an interview.

“My daughter fell and was covered with stripes. They had to turn around several times,” after making bad turns, said the father, adding that there was a baby in the group.

The mother and daughter trembled and soaked wet when the father picked them up. The family stayed with a friend in the city for 14 days before going to the Fraser valley in British Columbia to meet the father’s uncle.

The family now has weekly recordings with immigration officials, but is found in a sort of limbo. They are protected from expulsion in Haiti because Canada has issued a moratorium on moves to the country, but has trouble obtaining a status that would allow them to work here.

In the United States, the father holding a university degree in Haiti worked in social services.

“They are … very, very vulnerable,” said Robitaille, their lawyer. “Everything is very complicated now.”

Restrict access to asylum

As a rule, the narrow relative exception to the STCA allows families to enter together; Whatever the person who has the parent in Canada becomes his spouse and the anchor of children, said Maureen Silcoff, an immigration lawyer based in Toronto and a decideer of the Immigration and Refugees of Canada (IRB).

“The people who have returned to the border of this type of circumstances are subject to what I would call a legal problem,” said Silcoff, referring to the situation of the Haitian family.

She thinks that the problem is monitoring the definition of the relative anchoring described in the sure agreement of the third country – which does not include candidates for risk assessment before abotation (PRRA) as the father.

It is a complicated technicality that could prevent people with valid reasons from looking for protection in Canada to be able to consider their cases, say Robitaille and Silcoff.

Border agents are necessary under a 2023 Decision of the Supreme Court of Canada To consider the options, he called the “security valves” which could, for example, prevent a family from being divided.

“There is no rational reason why the family member (PRRA candidates) should not be authorized to enter Canada,” said Silcoff.

But Robitalle, the family lawyer, is concerned that the problem could be a means for ACSA agents to repress the number of border arrivals at a time when they can be examined in the midst of tensions between the United States and Canada to tighten immigration and border control.

“Do agents have more pressure to be stricter because there are more entries? Most likely,” said Robitaille, who plans to appeal the decision of the ACSS agent.

ACBS has not provided CBC questions on the deadlines to know if agents are encouraged to avoid separating families, or what procedures the agency has in place to prevent this from happening.

A 2017 document entitled National directive for the detention or housing of minors Posted on the CBSA website indicates that the agency should not separate families except in extremely rare cases. We do not know how it applies when the minor stays with a parent but not both.

There have been growing calls in Canada to reconsider its position according to which the United States is a safe country for refugees, because Trump has ordered ice agents to conduct raids, arrests and generalized deportations Torture reports.

So far, Canada has rather sought to tighten asylum duties at its border. In June, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government submitted Strong Borders Act, a major bill that would further restricted asylum complaints on the land border in Canada.