U.S. immigration crackdown sends a flood of refugees to Canada

As fears of refugee deportation mount in the United States, a surge of asylum seekers is turning to Canada — only to find a border that is getting increasingly hard to cross.

The number of refugee seekers processed by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) has shot up by 87 per cent between January and April.

In April, 494 ineligible refugee claimants from the U.S. were turned back at the Canadian border under the Safe Third Country Agreement, which bars most people from seeking asylum in Canada at the border. That’s up from 280 in January — a 76 per cent increase.

Growing refugee traffic at the Canadian border this year has emerged amid a looming clampdown on illegal immigration in the U.S. that experts say could trigger a flood of asylum seekers to Canada.

A controversial U.S. mo