This is part 1 of a 2-part series titled "The Other Border." Read part 2.
Immigrants living in Massachusetts on "temporary protected status" (TPS) are beginning to head for the border as courts consider President Trump's plan to send them back to their home countries.
But it is not the southern border that beckons these immigrants. It is the Canadian border that is seeing a surge in out-migration from the U.S.
There are more than 300,000 immigrants nationwide who are in the U.S. on temporary protected status, a 1999 policy intended to protect foreign nationals living in the U.S. from being returned to their home country if it is unsafe. In 2017 and 2018, the Trump administration canceled TPS for Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Nepal, Honduras and Sudan. For thousands, the only things standing in the way of deportation are federal courts, which have blocked cancellations for these countries for the time being. But if a slew of pending lawsuits fail, many TPS holders, including at least 12,000 in Massachusetts, will need to consider their options.
This uncertainty is making Canada more inviting.
Matt Cameron, an immigration attorney in East Boston, said some of his clients have raised this as a possibility.
“I've certainly heard a lot of people talk about Canada as a place where they think they might get better treatment,” said Cameron. “As things continue to go the way they are in this country, Canada certainly is looking better and better socially, politically, culturally. I wouldn't said it's a promised land, certainly, but it seems like a good option for a lot of people.”
It has been a good option for some Haitian TPS holders, said Reverend Eno Mondesir, senior pastor of the Haitian Baptist Church of Cambridge.
“Some members with TPS, that I know personally, left Boston and crossed over to Canada and a number of them received legal status in Canada," Mondesir said.
Mondesir encourages parishioners affected by the TPS imbroglio to seek refuge wherever they can. The prospect of returning to countries still wracked by street violence, lingering damage from natural disasters, and on-going gang warfare is unthinkable to many. So, some have their eyes on the north, said Mondesir.
Stories of success continue to spur some among the more than 4,700 Haitian TPS holders in the state to make their way to French-speaking Montreal.
“Most of the time it's after they are gone that we know that they are gone,” said Geralde Gabeau, founder and executive director of Immigrant Family Services in Roslindale, which advocates for Haitians in Massachusetts.
Gabeau cannot say for sure how many Haitian TPS holders have left the state, but Canada saw the number of Haitian asylum seekers more than triple in 2017 and 2018, totaling about 9,800. But Gabeau advises Haitians in the U.S. to stay put while lawsuits wind their way through federal court.
“We are working together. We have judges on our side. Do not panic, especially if you have TPS, you should not go.”
Some TPS holders feel they may have no choice.
Doris Reina-Landaverde is a custodian at Harvard and an immigration activist. She is from El Salvador but her three daughters were born in the U.S. She said she has watched with concern the news of families being separated at the U.S.- Mexico border and fears the same fate for her family.
“Sometimes I think to move to Canada. I know a lot of people from Haiti who moved when the TPS started ending for them. If I [have] to cross the border again, I will do that,” she said.
But Canada is not as wide open to immigrants as some might assume. Over the last few years, Ottawa has dispatched Spanish and Haitian-Creole speaking government representatives to American cities, including Miami, New York and Boston to dissuade TPS holders and other asylum seekers from heading north. And in June, a provision was added to the Canada–United States "Safe Third Country Agreement" that prevents anyone who has already applied for asylum in the United States from applying for asylum in Canada.
Janet Dench, executive director at the Canadian Council for Refugees, said that modification was meant to send a message to beleaguered immigrants in the U.S. who feel under assault by the Trump administration and are thinking of heading north.
“That agreement means that if you show up at an official port of entry, you will be immediately sent back to the U.S.,” said Dench. “So that would affect quite a few of the people who are under TPS.”
Laura Pacheco, a filmmaker who lives on the Vermont side of the northern border, said she’s seen the impact of this provision with her own eyes. On several occasions, she said she and her husband have witnessed what happens to some asylum seekers at one official point of entry.
“We've seen families — mothers, fathers with lots of children — being taken off buses at the border crossing, probably trying to get to Montreal. And you see them walking back on the American side," she said.
There are exceptions to the Safe Country Agreement, including crossing into Canada by boat, plane or illegal land entryways. The area where some on east coast have chosen to enter Canada is via a road called Roxham — a lonely driving path on the border of New York and Quebec that’s accessed, perhaps ironically, by driving along North Star street. Roxham Road became famous on YouTube and Facebook after stories were posted showing asylum seekers walking into Canada.
In addition to Haitian TPS holders, immigrants from Sudan, Honduras, Nepal and Liberia have crossed illegally into Canada. One group noticeably absent from a long list of asylum seekers has been immigrants from El Salvador, said Dench.
“Many people wondered whether we would see large numbers of Salvadorans because of the potential for the lifting of the TPS on El Salvadorans. But that has not really transpired,” she said.
Immigration experts believe that may change. There are more than 6,000 TPS holders from El Salvador living in Massachusetts, including Reina-Landaverde. She said she is becoming more desperate and concerned about her next move, and she’s not discouraged by Canada’s warnings.
“That government over there says, ‘Oh, if the people with TPS come here we’ll deport them.' And I don't know it's true. But if I have the option to be with my kids, I'd do anything. Even if we had to move to Canada, why not?” she said.
“Why not?” is the same question Isidro Lemus asked himself in 2017 when he drove his family six hours from Massachusetts to the Quebec border. There, with his wife and kids, Lemus — who was born in El Salvador but has lived for years in Nantucket — asked for asylum and received it.
“There’s one thing that Canada do[es that's] smarter than the U.S.," said Lemus. "Whoever cross[es] that border, they don’t treat them like an animal. They treat them like a human being.”
Phillip Martin is a reporter with WGBH’s New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
