Increased surveillance at the Canada-U.S. border means more asylum seekers could die

The Canadian government proposes expanding surveillance technologies at the Canadian-U.S. border like the cameras in use in the Sonoran Desert at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Shutterstock)

The Conversation

December 25, 2024

At a press conference on Dec. 17, the Canadian federal government announced proposed new measures to expand its management of Canada’s border with the United States. These measures were intended to appease the incoming Trump administration and to avoid a threatened 25 per cent import tariff.

The proposal includes expansions of border technologies, including RCMP counterintelligence, 24/7 surveillance between ports of entry, helicopters, drones and mobile towers. But what will this mean for people seeking asylum?

If the U.S.-Mexico border is any indication, it will mean more death.

 

The U.S.-Mexico border wall in California. (Shutterstock)

Criminalizing migration

At the press conference, Dominic LeBlanc, the minister of finance and intergovernmental affairs, reaffirmed Canada’s relationship with the incoming Trump administration. Framed around politics of difference, and relying on the fearmongering trope of migration as a “crisis,” Canada’s new border plan will also cost taxpayers $1.3 billion.

During the press conference, LeBlanc’s remarks conflated migration with trafficking and crime, relying on “crimmigration,” or the use of criminalization to discipline, exclude, or expel migrants or others seen as not entitled to be in a country. LeBlanc also made direct reference to preventing fraud in the asylum system, with the driving forces behind this new border plan being “minimizing border volumes” and “removing irritants” to the U.S.

 

Minister LeBlanc details Canada’s border security plan on Dec. 17, 2024.


However, these framings weaken the global right to asylum, which is an internationally protected right guaranteed by the 1951 Refugee Convention and sections 96 and 97 of Canada’s own Immigration and Refugee Protection Protection Act.

Canada’s own courts have also found that the U.S. is not a safe country for some refugees.

Deadly borders

Since 2018, I have been researching technology and migration. I have worked at and studied various borders around the world, starting in Canada, moving south to the U.S.-Mexico border and including various countries in Europe and East Africa, as well as the Palestinian territories. Over the years, I have worked with hundreds of people seeking safety and witnessed the horrific conditions they have to survive.

The Sonoran Desert containing the U.S.-Mexico border has become what anthropologist Jason de Leon calls “the land of open graves.” Researchers have shown that deaths have increased every year as a result of growing surveillance and deterrence mechanisms. I have witnessed these spaces of death in the Sonoran Desert and European borders, with people on the move succumbing to these sharpening borders.

Author’s photograph of graves in the Sonoran Desert — research has shown that more people die every year crossing into the U.S. through Mexico. (P. Molnar), CC BY

Canadian borders are not devoid of death. Families have frozen and drowned attempting to enter Canada. Others, like Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal, nearly froze to death and lost limbs as a result of frostbite; they later received refugee status and became Canadian citizens in 2023.

‘Extreme vulnerability’

Throughout the press conference, a clear theme emerged again and again: Canada’s border plan will “expand and deepen the relationship” between Canada and U.S. through border management, including both data sharing and operational support. The border management plan will include an aerial intelligence task force to provide non-stop surveillance. The mandate of the Canada Border Services Agency will also expand, and include a joint operational strike force.

In November, president-elect Donald Trump named former Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan as his administration’s “border czar.” Homan explicitly called out Canada after his appointment, calling the Canadian border “an extreme vulnerability.”

Trump has also made pointed comments directed at Justin Trudeau, referring to him as “governor” and to Canada as the 51st state. And with Trump’s aggressive “America First” policies and the 25 per cent tariff threat, appeasing the incoming administration by strengthening border surveillance at the Canada-U.S. border is the lowest hanging fruit for the Trudeau administration to strengthen its hand.

Creeping surveillance

Border surveillance technologies do not remain at the border. In 2021, communities in Vermont and New York have already raised concerns about possible privacy infringements with the installation of surveillance towers.

There are also fears of growing surveillance and repression of journalists and the migrant justice sector as a whole.

And surveillance technologies used at the border have also been repurposed: for example, robo-dogs first employed at the U.S.-Mexico border have appeared in New York City and facial recognition technologies ubiquitous at airports are also being used on sports fans in stadiums.

 

A remote-controlled robot dog in San Bernardino, Calif. used for search-and-rescue operations and law enforcement use. (Shutterstock)

The big business of borders

Taxpayers will foot the bill of this new border strategy to the hefty tune of $1.3 billion. This amount is part of a growing and lucrative border industrial complex that is now worth a staggering US$68 billion dollars and projected to grow exponentially to nearly a trillion dollars by 2031.

But taxpayers do not benefit. Instead, the private sector makes up the market place of technical solutions to the so-called “problem” of migration. In this lucrative ecosystem built on fear of “the migrant other,” it is the private sector actors and not taxpayers who benefit.

Instead of succumbing to the exclusionary politics of the incoming U.S. administration, we should call for transparency and accountability in the development and deployment of new technologies. There is also a need for more governance and laws to curtail these high-risk tech experiments before more people die at Canada’s borders.

Instead of spending $1.3 billion dollars on surveillance technologies that infringe upon people’s rights, Canada should strengthen its asylum system and civil society support. Canada should also remember its international human rights obligations, and resist the U.S. political rhetoric of dehumanizing people who are seeking safety and protection.

Petra Molnar, Associate Director, Refugee Law Lab, York University, Canada

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.