By Anna Mehler Paperny
TORONTO (Reuters) -Canada is working with the United States to “deal with” countries reluctant to accept deportees as both nations increase efforts to ship migrants back to their home countries, according to a government document seen by Reuters.
Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, the United States has cracked down on migrants in the country illegally. But the U.S. has at times struggled to remove people as quickly as it would like in part because of countries’ unwillingness to accept them.
As Canada has increased deportations, which reached a decade-high last year, it has also run up against countries reluctant to accept deportees. Canadian officials issued a single-use travel document in June to a Somali man they wanted to deport because Somalia would not provide him with travel documents.
In a redacted message to an unknown recipient, cited in a February 28 email, the director general of international affairs for Canada’s Immigration Department wrote, “Canada will also continue working with the United States to deal with countries recalcitrant on removals to better enable both Canada and the United States to return foreign nationals to their home countries.”
The department referred questions about the message to the Canada Border Services Agency, which declined to specify how Canada and the U.S. were cooperating, when the cooperation started, and whether the working relationship had changed this year.
“Authorities in Canada and the United States face common impediments to the removal of inadmissible persons, which can include uncooperative foreign governments that refuse the return of their nationals or to issue timely travel documents,” an agency spokesperson wrote in an email.
“While Canada and the United States do not have a formal bilateral partnership that is specific to addressing this challenge, the Canada Border Services Agency continues to work regularly and closely with United States law enforcement partners on matters of border security.”
When the email was sent, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in his last days in office before being replaced in March by Prime Minister Mark Carney. The Canada-U.S. relationship was strained by Trump’s threat of tariffs, which he said were partly a response to migrants illegally entering the U.S. from Canada.
The spokesperson added the CBSA has committed to deporting more people, from 18,000 in the last fiscal year to 20,000 in each of the next two years.
Immigration has become a contentious topic in Canada as some politicians blame migrants for a housing and cost-of-living crisis.
The rise in Canada’s deportations largely reflects an increased focus on deporting failed refugee claimants. Refugee lawyers say that could mean some people are sent back to countries where they face danger while they try to contest their deportation.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Frank McGurty and Rod Nickel)
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