Neighbourly Migrant-Sharing

 

"You don't have to walk anywhere, we can buy you a free ticket. You can go to any city. We can take you up to the Canadian border, wherever."

"[Denver already has] too many migrants [resources are sapped]."

"OK, who wants to travel to different cities where there is more work?"

Andres Carrera, "newcomer communication liaison", City of Denver

"Some want to go to Canada, some want to go to warmer states, and we are there for them as they continue to move on with their pursuit of this dream."

"[My administration is funding the] re-ticketing process [of migrants wanting to move elsewhere, including illegally crossing into Canada]."

New York City mayor Erik Adams

Immigrants file into a U.S. Customs and Border Protection bus after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas. Since 2022, thousands of migrants have been bused north from Texas to "sanctuary cities" like Denver or New York; both of which have attempted to redirect the migrants even further north into Canada.  Photo by John Moore/Getty Image

February figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection cite over 7 million people illegally crossing the Southwestern U.S. border in the past three years. A flood that prompted Texas Governor Greg Abbott in 2022 to pack busloads of migrants to northern states, mostly jurisdictions that declared themselves to be "sanctuary cities". There, local law enforcement has orders not to cooperate in enforcing federal immigration law.

Resulting in states like Denver, a certified "sanctuary city", which has been the destination of about 40,000 bused migrants from Texas, spurring the conversation above, where the migrants are asked if they're interested in moving on elsewhere, the financial tab for the travel picked up by the city, unable itself to accommodate any greater numbers of migrants than it has already made room for. As such, Denver joins New York City as a "sanctuary city" whose attempts to cope with the bused-in surge of migrants includes offering them free passage to Canada.

It's not exactly a one-way situation. U.S. border agents in New York, New Hampshire and Vermont last month reported having arrested record numbers of migrants attempting illegal entry from Canada. Last year, 7,000 migrants wee arrested while illegally attempting to enter those states through Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. "I have never seen anything like it", Vermont-based U.S. Border Patrol Agent Erik Lavallee commented in an interview.

The City of Denver commented publicly that migrants sent directly to Canadian cities did not reflect city policy. On the other hand, the city sees itself clear to distributing free bus tickets to U.S. stops located close to the Canadian border, should migrants express such a request. The situation is part of a record-breaking surge of illegal migrants. Migrants had arrived via the southern border to Denver, where a simultaneous surge in illegal crossings is steeper exponentially than anything coming from Canada.

An official tally by the Office of the Texas Governor identifies New York City as the prime target of their operation to bus migrants to U.S. sanctuary cities. Border agents, on the other hand, report that migrants arriving from Canada often attempt to avoid detection, as opposed to migrants arriving via Mexico who frequently seek border patrol agents to claim asylum.

 

Plattsburgh, N.Y.-based border agent Raymond Bresnahan in January revealed that while most migrants arriving through Canada seek employment, the agents are seeing not-insignificant numbers of "aggravated felons. We still catch a lot of bad people".

Screenshot of migrants arriving on buses in Denver, Colorado. KUSA