New and old fears at a well-trodden Canada-U.S. border
CBC
Standing in a neighbour's driveway on Perry Mills Road in Champlain, N.Y., less than a kilometre from the border with Canada, Stephen Phaneuf points to fields and forest behind the small blue home.
"They come out from the fields, out from everywhere," says Phaneuf, 67, referring to migrants crossing from Canada into the United States, who have been doing so in increasing numbers since 2022.
Phaneuf's property across the road sits on the banks the Chazy River. Last winter, he said he found a woman and her child sleeping with his pigs in small plastic huts near the road.
"I felt so bad for them. Didn't even have shoes on her feet," Phaneuf said.
When border patrol officers arrived, Phaneuf said the woman and her son attempted to flee but got caught in the electric fence meant to keep the animals in their pen.
In December 2023, the body of another woman, 33-year-old Ana Karen Vasquez-Flores, was found in the Chazy River, days after she crossed on foot into the U.S.
"I lived here my whole life and I've never seen it as bad as this," Phaneuf said.
Phaneuf is a registered Democrat, but voted Republican for the first time in 2024 in order to vote for Trump. He listed inflation and border security as the reasons why he made the switch.
Nearby, at the end of a road similar to Roxham, leading straight to the Canadian border, Calvin Allen, 72, stood on his porch Friday afternoon and pointed to the woods where he saw a family step out two years ago.
"A whole family. A bunch of kids, all frozen. The wind was howling and with the wind chill it was just about 35 below zero," Allen said.
Both Allen and Phaneuf said they didn't like Trump's threat of tariffs on Canada, but that they agreed with his demands for Ottawa do more to secure the 6,400-km border.
Several residents in the area told CBC News on a visit to the border Friday that they are told by U.S. border patrol agents not to help migrants or let them into their homes. The residents said that while they worried for migrants' well-being, they also believed some of them could be dangerous.
Trump is once again threatening mass deportations, but the situation at the Canadian land border has changed since his last time in office.
In March 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and current U.S. President Joe Biden signed a number of changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA). The changes made it so migrants could only claim asylum once in the other country if they had a close family member living there or if they'd managed to go undetected for 14 days after crossing.
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Standing in a neighbour's driveway on Perry Mills Road in Champlain, N.Y., less than a kilometre from the border with Canada, Stephen Phaneuf points to fields and forest behind the small blue home.
This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.
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