(Lacolle) The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) will demolish the last of its structures on Roxham Road, an outpost built to deal with the influx of migrants crossing into Canada on foot from northern New State York to seek asylum.
Federal police will hold a news conference Monday morning near the facility before work begins to demolish the structure, located about 50 kilometers southeast of Montreal at the end of a rural road in southern Quebec .
Tens of thousands of asylum seekers entered Canada using this clandestine route before it was closed at the end of March after the United States and Canada reached an agreement to fill a long-standing gap in the 2004 Safe Third Country Agreement and apply it to all 8,900 kilometers. shared border.
Asylum seekers must apply for refugee status in the first of two countries they enter rather than simply at official ports of entry, a situation which has led to thousands using irregular crossings such as Roxham Road. to ensure that their requests would be heard in Canada.
Roxham Road has always been a popular place to cross, but a surge in asylum seekers began after the United States cracked down on illegal immigration and imposed new restrictions on refugees in 2017 under President Donald Trump. Trump.
This led the RCMP to build infrastructure at the site to deal with the heavy foot traffic.