Before Roxham Road became the last hope for asylum seekers looking to start a new life, before it became a political lightning rod for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, before it was both a logistical problem and bargaining chip for Quebec premier François Legault, it was nothing more than a dirt road between Hemmingford, Quebec, and Plattsburgh, New York—a small blip on the 8,891 kilometres of shared border between Canada and the US. Before 2017, most people hadn’t heard of Roxham Road.
Then US president Donald Trump would change all that. His decision to drastically reduce the number of refugees the US would accept in 2017, from 110,000 to 50,000, would have a major impact on the increase of irregular migrants entering Canada (“irregular” meaning they bypassed official ports of entry). Trump’s rhetoric against foreigners, migrants, Muslims, and refugees prompted many to try their luck in Canada. There were 2,464 irregular entries apprehended by the RCMP in Quebec, Manitoba, and British Columbia in all of 2016. By the end of 2017, that number would climb to 20,593.
