Human Trafficking in North America, from North to South/South to North

"The northern border, it always has been, but it's gotten much worse, much more prevalent because ... it's a multibillion-dollar business, the smuggling of drugs, guns and humans."

"Law enforcement officers operating in these areas [parts of Vermont and New York] have seen unprecedented traffic from illegal aliens."

"Law enforcement encountered aliens from 97 different countries, including China, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and Yemen."

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi 

Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a human smuggling news conference Thursday Sept. 4, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

 

Joint Task Force Alpha, a multiagency effort to halt smuggling of people into the United States, has now been expanded to include the Canada-U.S. border, along with the United States' maritime border. This is a necessary change, Attorney General Pam Bondi explained, since human traffickers have been focusing their illegal trade north, in the wake of the Trump administration's crackdown at the Mexican border.

 

This, following a meeting with Canada's Justice Minister Sean Fraser, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, and Kevin Brosseau, Canada's "fentanyl czar" in discussions relating to the shared border that took place in Washington. The August 27 meeting readout expanded on Canada's ongoing efforts to keep communities safe "on both sides of our shared border in the fight against fentanyl and transnational criminal organizations, to strengthen the criminal justice system and border security".

 

This, against a background where President Trump hit his northern neighbour with wide-ranging tariffs, on the basis of declaring an emergency at the northern border with the U.S. The initial tariff rate imposed in March was raised in August to 35 percent, hitting back at Ottawa's retaliatory tariffs while once again citing border security issues outstanding.  

 

At the time of the original tariffs assessed back in March Ottawa acted quickly in hopes of decelerating an impending trade war that was certain -- given the two countries' long history of intertwined manufacturing and trade -- to do significant harm to both Canada's and the U.S.'s economies. The two sides have met at the White House and although relaxed discussions took place, the American position spelled out by the president did not relent.

 

In strenuous efforts to reassure the American side that Canada was making a real effort to satisfy its demands over the issue of human smuggling, the Canada Border Services Agency noted it had opened 80 cases with links to human smuggling with eight charges in six cases resulting in convictions for 2025. In 2024, 83 cases had been opened; a year earlier, 57, so Canada has not been lagging on the file. 

 

Human smuggling at the border is also a two-way issue."We have a strong border, and we are making it stronger", the Canadian agency remarked, with an additional $355 million allocated to it, reflecting the border plan of the federal government in Ottawa.

 

Signs mark the international boundary at a Canada-US border crossing known as the Peace Arch Border Crossing, on the day President Donald Trump announced new tariffs, in Blaine, Washington, on April 2, 2025.   David Ryder/Reuters/File

 

 According to border state American politicians, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, instances of human smuggling across the Canada-U.S. border in recent years have been a concern. There was a case of four members of a family from India who attempted to transit Canada walking across a wooded area in Manitoba in winter -- parents with an 11-year-old girl, and a 3-year-old-son -- were found frozen to death, only a short distance from the American border; sad casualties of a desperate attempt to reach the U.S. although they had lived for a brief period in Canada.

 

During the news conference where Bondi spoke of the issue, the indictment of a Michigan woman was mentioned. People, including children, from Central America were smuggled by this woman into the United States last year, across the border with Canada. From February to November, according to the indictment, Norma Linda Lozano, 53, was involved with a smuggling organization bringing Guatemalans, Hondurans, Mexicans and El Salvadorans across the Canada-U.S. border.

 

U.S. Border Patrol agents who patrol the Swaton Sector out of Champlain, N.Y., transport detained Mexican nationals to cells at their border station. (CBC)

 

An investigation by RCMP Federal Policing – Eastern Region has led to charges laid against two individuals who allegedly facilitated the illegal entry of persons from the United States to Canada. William Lamadine, 36, of Niskayuna, New York, and Yaya Hassan Yaya Abderaman, 35, of Jersey City, New Jersey, are charged with organizing entry into Canada, contrary to section 117 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, conspiracy to organize entry into Canada, and conspiracy to bribe an officer, in this case an employee of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). They were arrested in September 2023 at the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing.

According to the investigation by the Airport and Federal Investigations Detachment, initiated following CBSA procedures, the two men allegedly organized the entry of over 50 migrants into Canada by bus over a period of around three months. William Lamadine was employed as a bus driver for the company used.

A request for extradition to Canada is being considered. The investigation is ongoing.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police news release, March 2005 

An increase in  trafficking since 2023 has been taking place across the Canadian border with New York and Vermont, where the DOJ is expanding its task force, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Individuals operating smuggling operations, according to a senior departmental official, are largely from South and Central America -- not Canada -- flying north. This has taken place in relation to "progress that's been made on dismantling some of the organizations at the southern border and shutting off some of their routes to the U.S.", the official explained.

 

Donald Trump has warned that the United States has a growing migrant problem on its northern border. (Alex Brandon/The Associated Press)

Forbid Them and They Will Come

"These tragedies are the result of the tragic collateral damages of Italian and European policies, protecting borders and reducing safe and regular passage to Europe."

Maco Bertotto, director of programs, MSF (Medicines sans Frontiers)

"Desperation can never justify travelling in conditions that endanger the lives of their children."

Italian InteriorMinister Matteo Plantedosi   

 

"It is inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the price of the 'ticket' they paid in the false perspective of a safe journey,"

"The government is committed to preventing departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies, and will continue to do so."

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni 

Dozens of people managed to survive the boat's sinking   EPA

The latest migrant tragedy, a colossal loss of lives that may eventually tally well over a hundred in number of those who drowned is once again in the news. These are people gambling with their lives who assure themselves that the chances of their dying along with their family members are slight, reasoning that hundreds of thousands have made similar trips in the last decade and lived to flourish finding new lives in Europe. These are migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria, Muslims attempting to escape the smothering poverty, violence and political-sectarian tribal antipathies of their culture and fellow Muslims.

People ardent in their religious conviction, quick to repeat that Islam is a religion of peace, one that enjoins its faithful to brotherly reception of other Muslims. Yet in these theocracies, dictatorships, tyrannies  and oil Sheikdoms Islam is practised as a governing control over peoples' lives, offering little in compensation for their constricted lives of bondage to governing bodies that make use of Islam as a torture chamber of the mind and body..

Those who prefer to escape the confines of their native lands and strike out for distant lands offering a future for themselves and their families as free and equal citizens envision a kinder world of opportunities attainable through the expedient of a dangerous undertaking, dependent on the professional paid assistance of human traffickers, seasoned in the enterprise of teaching migrants how to evade authorities and how to manipulate the public feelings of compassion to their advantage.

Bodies of the drowned are being recovered from the Mediterranean a day after a wood sailboat with a maximum of 50 spaces, where 200 people were on board taxing the craft to the limit in an unruly, storm-tossed sea. When the wooden ship hit shoals it collapsed and broke apart and passengers, inclusive of children, had little chance of survival. According to Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif, over two dozen aboard were his citizens.

 

Rescuers recover a body at a beach near Cutro, southern Italy, after a migrant boat broke apart in rough seas, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023. Rescue officials say dozens of migrants have died after their boat broke apart off southern Italy. Giuseppe Pipita/AP

Bodies were washed ashore adjacent to where their vessel sank near a seaside resort on the eastern coast of Calabria as the storm that destroyed the boat began to calm. In the nearby town of Crotone dozens of coffins were spaced in a sports hall prior to a funeral, with local people leaving flowers and candles, showing their respect for the dead. According to local authorities 80 survived the disaster of the 180 to 200 people who boarded the vessel as it left from Turkey.

Italy's current government is one where the elected leader campaigned on a promise to put a stop to he work of migrant rescue groups. Italy has been besieged over the years by hundreds of thousands of migrants reaching its islands and mainland shorelines in flight from conflict and endemic poverty. Central Americans, Haitians and Africans along with Arabs from the Middle East have flooded in similar numbers overland to reach Mexico, planning to cross into the United States where a similar ingress flow of migrants is occurring.

Since 2014 over 20,000 deaths have been registered by the United Nations Missing Migrants Project, in the central Mediterranean. 220 of those migrants died making the crossing in 2023 alone. Most of the boats setting out for Europe crowded with migrants who have paid handsomely for the privilege to flirt with death in their determination to reach Europe, depart from North Africa, but Turkey has seen an increasing number of departures in the past number of years; 15,000 in 2022.

The Calabria boat wreckage after departure from the Turkish port of Izmir occurred following an initial effort to reach the vessel before bad weather intervened. But the rescue effort failed and what is left is retrieval of all the missing, presumed to have drowned, the sea gradually giving up their bodies. Italian authorities have arrested three men, suspects of human smuggling who survived the collapsed boat.

The wreckage of a ship that was carrying migrants is seen on the beach as search and rescue operations continue in Crotone, Italy February 27, 2023. Valeria Ferraro/Anadolu Agency/Getty

Risking Life for a New Life

"The investigation into the death of the four individuals in Canada is ongoing along with an investigation into a larger human smuggling operation."

Affidavit, John Stanley, special agent, U.S.Homeland Security

"[The agency] deeply regrets the tragic loss of life."

"Whatever the circumstances, no one should ever have to choose such a perilous journey."

Rema Jamous Imseis, Canada representative, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

 

"They believe that that's the only country [the United States] that has a lot of opportunities." 

"And there's [an] envy factor that [makes them think], 'That person can go to … that particular country. Why not me?' So they would land here and then they try to, you know, go back to or travel to [the] U.S. and migrate there, right? That's their motivation." 

 "But they don't realize the fact that Canada has equal opportunities, right? And they can make their life here, too."    

"They may not have realized the fact that walking so long a distance is not practically feasible."

Akhil Shah, president, Friends of Gujarat, Brampton, Ontario

Four people, one an infant, were found dead in a Manitoba field near the Canada-U.S. border, on Wednesday. A U.S. Homeland Security agent believes they may have been victims of a wider human smuggling operation. (Submitted by RCMP)

 

Canada signed an agreement in 2004 with the United States that asylum seekers who attempt entry to Canada from the United States at an official border crossing are sent back to the U.S. and vice versa, each being recognized as a safe country to seek asylum in; those declaring themselves refugees are meant to remain in the first country accessed. 

 

On the other hand, those deliberately bypassing official border crossings to declare themselves refugees when they're apprehended by Canadian law agents like the RCMP are escorted into Canada and invited to file a refugee claim, and to remain in Canada while their claim is being processed -- to be either accepted or denied on the basis of assessed claim merit. 

Canada was intercepting thousands of people from Africa and Haiti and the Middle East during a period of several years when haven-seeking refugee claimants -- but mostly migrants -- were passing from the United States in to Canada, at a time when the U.S. was attempting to come to grips with the millions of illegals living underground in America.

Recently, even while the U.S. is attempting to cope with tens of thousands mostly Central American migrants and haven seekers on their southern border with Mexico, a small number of aspirants to enter the U.S. from Canada has drawn attention from U.S. border agents and Homeland Security. What has spotlighted this new border incursion event is the discovery of four members of a family from India found frozen to death just over the border from northern Manitoba attempting to enter the U.S.

At this time of year, freezing temperatures and frequent blizzards become threats to human life. The family, comprised of two adults, a teenager and a baby, became disoriented, had no idea where they were or where they were heading, and succumbed to the severe cold, dying on an isolated patch of snow-covered ground in a sparsely populated area. They had walked for hours, were exhausted and died of exposure.

They were headed for Minnesota with the expectation they would meet at an assigned destination where they would be picked up and driven to an appointed place. American investigators have arrested and charged 47-year-old Steve Shand of Florida with human smuggling. He was driving a 15-passenger rental van from the airport in Minneapolis. At the time that agents stopped the van five other Indian nationals were nearby having "walked across the border expecting to be picked up by someone on the U.S. side", after having walked for 11 hours.

Human smuggling experts say the initial investigation and arrest connected to a family being found frozen to death near the U.S. border points to a “sophisticated operation.”  John Woods/The Canadian Press