‘Canada is handing people over to ICE’: refugees rejected at border face US detention | Canada
As each day passes in U.S. custody, Markens Appolon can feel the life he’s dreamed of slipping away from him.
The 25-year-old fled Haiti to escape widespread gang violence that had disrupted his university education in economics, planning to join his family in Montreal.
But for the past four and a half months, Appolon has been incarcerated in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. He wonders how he would even begin rebuilding if he were released.
“My mental health is getting worse every day. You see the world going on and you’re stuck here watching,” he said. “I’m here, and even when I get out, the problem will get worse.”
Appolon had sought refuge in Canada, believing it offered sanctuary to those at risk. Having Canadian family should have meant he could seek asylum. But it was Canadian officials who handed him over to ICE agents who detained him.
“That’s what’s so shocking about this case and others like it,” said Erin Simpson, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer who represents Appolon. “Canada agrees with this. Canada turns people over to ICE.”
Simpson and other Canadian immigration lawyers say they have been inundated with cases like Appolon’s since the start of Donald Trump’s second term in office.
Refugees like Appolon are trying to seek asylum in Canada by making an exception to the country’s rules. Safe Third Country Agreement with the USA. According to the agreement, refugees must seek asylum in the first “safe country” they arrive at.
However, legal experts argue that the United States should not be considered a safe third country. They argue that the country’s prolonged detention of asylum seekers and threats to deport asylum seekers to countries where they could be harmed or killed show that the United States is not safe.
Meanwhile, Canada is tightening its own asylum system. The new law, which came into force in March, created greater ineligibility rules for refugee claimants, leading critics to accuse Mark Carney’s government of implementing Trump-style immigration policies.
Simpson said refugees like Appolon remain imprisoned in the United States because “Canada handles border processing in a rigid and frankly unfair manner.”
“The consequences for him could not have been more serious,” he said.
Appolon fled Haiti in 2023, when the country was plagued by devastating gang wars, a political power vacuum, economic collapse, and famine. He moved to Florida, where he lives with his uncle, under a special humanitarian visa program from the Biden administration that allows him to work and study.
When Trump returned to power and threatened to end the program, Appolon decided to seek asylum in Canada.
A refugee trying to enter Canada from the United States must prove that he or she has Canadian family members in order to be allowed to enter the country. Otherwise, they need to use the US system.
Appolon arrived at the Quebec-Vermont border on December 28 but was rejected and turned over to ICE. Her aunt, a Canadian citizen, was temporarily out of the country due to a family emergency, and border officials told her she couldn’t get in unless her aunt was physically present in the country.
According to Simpson, Canadian border guards were more lenient in previous cases and should have given Appolon time to return to his aunt. He said Canadian legislation does not specify that a relative must be physically present in the country when a refugee applies.
Despite the latest legislation, Canada still has a global reputation as a country that welcomes refugees and immigrants. But the consequences of rejection have become more severe, according to many immigration lawyers.
Although people seeking refugee status have been turned away at the Canadian border in the past, immigration lawyers say the situation has worsened since Trump came to power.
The Trump administration has created turmoil for those entering the US before 2025 on humanitarian visas and other temporary immigration statuses that are now under threat.
As a result, more people are considering Canada. This has led to tightening controls at the border as Canada attempts to fend off a potential flood of claims, even if the country has the capacity to accept claimants.
Tenzin, a refugee from Tibet, said Canada’s willingness to send him to an ICE prison seemed completely contrary to its international image. The 29-year-old tried to seek asylum at Canada’s US border in August. His Canadian family was awaiting his arrival.
“I thought Canadians were better than the United States… but when I was treated like that, I thought there were some bad people in Canada,” he said.
He was soon placed in ICE’s Buffalo facility. By December, Tenzin began to lose control of the muscles on the left side of his face.
After begging for days to see a doctor, ICE agents eventually took him to the hospital, he said. His hands and ankles were handcuffed and he was transported in a thin sweatsuit in the middle of a snowstorm. The agents told him they were out of coats.
A doctor diagnosed him with Bell’s palsy, a disease that causes sudden facial paralysis.
The Guardian is using only Tenzin’s first name for fear that speaking publicly about his time in ICE detention would affect his employment opportunities.
Heather Neufeld, an Ottawa immigration lawyer who represented Tenzin, said that as a stateless refugee in Nepal, he was ineligible to obtain travel documents. His only chance to leave Nepal was to obtain a fake passport from India to reach Canada across the US border.
He said border officials refused to meet with Tenzin’s family when he requested asylum.
“The officer was not willing to consider the possibility that he was actually a Tibetan refugee,” he said.
Neufeld was able to successfully argue that Tenzin’s treatment at the Canadian border was procedurally complex. He was released in February and joined his family in Toronto.
Audrey Macklin, a professor of immigration and refugee law at the University of Toronto, said Canada could accept many more refugees from the United States.
But he said the country’s support for the Safe Third Country Agreement and recent tightening of the asylum system had shattered that image.
“[Canada] “He constantly emphasizes how generous he is towards refugees,” he said, and continued: “But it is clear that there is no political will.”
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the federal department that manages the arrival of asylum seekers, said the U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement is “an important tool for the orderly management of asylum claims.”
Canadian law Safe Third Country needs to maintain commitment to human rights. The agency said the U.S. is “continuously monitored” to make sure it meets those standards.
Gurbir Singh said he fled India after receiving death threats from police and sought asylum in Canada on March 25, where he planned to join his family in Brampton, a city on the outskirts of Toronto.
But Canadian border officials did not believe he was Singh, despite his documents and fingerprints matching those in the system. He was turned over to ICE and held at the agency’s Buffalo detention center before Simpson convinced Canadian authorities of his identity. He was released and allowed to enter Canada in late April.
“I’ve certainly never seen that. But we’re seeing a real rigidity in exceptions at the border and a real failure to recognize the extraordinary cost of bad decision-making,” Simpson said.
“I felt like Canada was known for its human rights. But they didn’t give me any rights… They said, ‘You can’t stay here,'” Singh said.
The Canada Border Service Agency, the federal agency responsible for border control, said it could not comment on Appolon, Tenzin and Singh’s cases due to privacy concerns. But he maintained that border services officials assessed requests “impartially” and that claimants “understood their rights”.
The agency said refugees are responsible for proving they are eligible to enter Canada. Border officers need to be “satisfied” that “a family relationship is more likely than not to exist”.
CBSA agents may reconsider a refugee’s request in “exceptional” circumstances, the spokesman said.
US ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
