USA TODAY traveled with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police by ATV and boat along the northern border, revealing a different approach to the enforcement taking place in the United States.
DOREA, Canada – As their eight-wheeled ATV jolted through this border community’s high grass, the Mounties’ radios crackled to life: A handful of migrants had snuck across the international boundary from New York, hunkering down beneath a big tree.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers strategized in French, considering their next move in their daily cat-and-mouse game in this area about a 90-minute drive southwest of Montreal. Race off to catch the migrants? Call in their colleagues to help?
After a few moments, they settled on a different approach.
They waited.
The other US border: Patrolling with the Canadian Mounties
See how Canada’s Mounties patrol the US-Canada border, where smugglers, asylum seekers and dangerous crossings test officers regularly.
“These are people who already think they are going to die. And they just want a better life. That’s the hardest part, being a police officer. You feel for these people, a mother with a 10-year-old,” Cpl. Samuel Perreault-Magny said. “We have a lot of sympathy. There are some criminals who are crossing, but there are some people who want to cross to get a better life. Behind our uniform and badge, we are also human.”
It’s a strategy far different than that commonly seen south of the Canadian border, where federal immigration authorities spurred on by President Donald Trump use aggressive tactics to intercept and detain people illegally crossing into the United States or remaining there without permission. U.S. agents have drawn significant criticism for their approach, including for wearing masks and fatally shooting migrants and U.S. citizen protesters.
Against that backdrop, the Mounties gave USA TODAY a rare behind-the-scenes look at how they operate. In patrols via boat, unmarked pickups and ATV, Canada’s federal officers demonstrated how they secure their southern border from the consequences of American immigration policy, permissive gun laws and demand for illegal drugs, including fentanyl.
They showed a different approach to the mostly women and children they encountered on the world’s longest border: They wear ID and body cameras. But no face coverings. And migrants rarely die at their hands. Mounties in Quebec have no record of ever fatally shooting a migrant, according to a spokeswoman.
Since 2000, at least 17 people have died in Canadian immigration detention custody, most in provincial jails, according to the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. In contrast, at least 53 people have died in ICE custody since Trump retook the White House in January 2025, according to USA TODAY’s immigration enforcement tracker.
For years, border-crossing between the two countries was a lot more casual, with no passport needed. In many areas, communities were split by the border and people simply walked across without immigration checks.
Border controls tightened in advance of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, then again after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Trump clamped down more during his first term, and then doubled down upon returning to office in 2025. Like their Canadian counterparts, U.S. officials monitor borders with patrol boats, vehicles and remote cameras.
“There’s no wall, there’s no person with a rifle in a tower, but we are here 24/7,” Perreault-Magny said as his team patrolled the area.
Every day, small groups of migrants cross this remote section of the U.S.-Canadian border, moving in both directions. Smugglers move guns north and drugs in both directions. While most migrants walk through the heavily forested area, others try to cross in boats, particularly at the border-spanning the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian nation reservation.
Canadian authorities prioritize arresting the smugglers.
“Those are the ones we can send to jail or kick out of Canada,” Perreault-Magny said.
While much attention has focused on the Mexican border under Trump, the White House has also made enforcement of the Canadian border a priority. The Trump administration has complained that Canada has failed to secure its side of the 5,525-mile-long border stitching across forests, mountains and the Great Lakes.
Border crossings from Canada have dropped substantially under Trump. In 2024, U.S. officials reported nearly 200,000 “encounters” at the northern border. Last year, it dropped to 85,746. Last month, U.S. officials intercepted about 5,000 people crossing illegally.
About 74 people were caught crossing into Canada from the United States in the first quarter of 2026, according to Canadian statistics. But the Mounties said they’re now seeing an increase in people seeking refuge in Canada as Trump toughens American immigration enforcement.
Little chance of escape
The migrants gathered under the tree didn’t know it, but the Mounties clocked them even before they crossed the border. Earlier in the day, Mounties called the Americans to let them know a different group of five migrants was crossing south into the United States. Dropped off on the Canadian side, that group walked ‒ in full view of remote security cameras – into a field of shoulder-high corn bordering the United States. They were then detained by an American border patrol.
Because this border area connecting northern New York state to southern Quebec is so remote, there’s little chance of migrants getting away. Only a few roads cross the area, and the Mounties recognize local farmers’ vehicles. The officers also have drones and helicopters equipped to track people hiding in the dark.
Eventually, a car or a minivan will creep down the narrow dirt road, ready to collect migrants who have paid at least $1,000 for GPS coordinates and guidance on how to get across. Sometimes they call a taxi or seek guidance from locals about how to get to Montreal or even Toronto, hundreds of miles away.
That’s when the Mounties waiting nearby swoop in. Perreault-Magny said frightened and flustered migrants sometimes try to climb into his unmarked patrol pickup, mistaking it for a smuggler coming to collect them.
Haitian migration increasing as Trump clamps down
Trump has placed intense focus on the U.S.-Mexico border, deploying the military, expanding the wall and turning back most people crossing in search of asylum. And his administration has toughened immigration enforcement domestically, including by ending “Temporary Protected Status” for hundreds of thousands of long-term residents, including Haitians who fled their homeland.
Meanwhile, more Haitians are trying to illegally cross into Canada from the United States, according to the Mounties and human rights groups. Driven by desperation, the migrants are gambling that the consequences of getting caught in Canada will outweigh the risks of remaining in the United States, the Mounties and human rights officials said.
Most are mistaken.
The United States and Canada have a longstanding agreement requiring people fleeing persecution to request asylum in whichever country they first set foot in. A March 2023 deal between the two countries closed a loophole allowing people who snuck across the U.S. border into Canada to seek asylum.
Now, most of those caught crossing illegally into Canada are immediately sent back to the United States, where their asylum claims are typically denied under Trump policies.
Among the exceptions for asylum-seekers crossing from the United States is one for people who can evade capture for two weeks, which resets the asylum-claim clock. That can prompt behavior some might find shocking, the Mounties said.
Last month, an accused human trafficker rammed a Mountie’s patrol vehicle while trying to escape. The suspect faces criminal charges, while the five migrants who were shepherded across the border were arrested and turned over to the Canada Border Services Agency. The CBSA manages the official border crossings.
Unlike the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S.-Canada border mostly lacks physical barriers. Instead, large portions of it run through expansive forests. In the winter, deep snow accumulates. In the summer, mosquitoes and ticks head for anyone not wearing what the Mounties refer to as “summer perfume” ‒ bug spray.
The lack of a physical border offers migrants a seemingly easier path into the United States than crossing the Mexican border. They are also spurred on by video testimonials from successful crossers, who are recorded by smugglers known on both borders as “coyotes.”
Mounties said they’ve seen an increase in the number of criminal organizations smuggling people across the border in both directions after the 2023 Canada-United States agreement. In some cases, migrants headed south to the United States stay in the same Montreal safe houses as people who have snuck into Canada and are waiting out the 14-day refugee period.
Perreault-Magny said he knows most of the migrants are just looking for a better life.
“You wish you could help them better, but that’s definitely not the way we want people to enter our country,” Perreault-Magny said. “Unfortunately, even though I feel for them, we still have a job to do it and we’ll do it, don’t get me wrong. “
Trump and American immigration officials often describe migrants as an invading force destroying the country from within. They name and shame those being deported, in many cases forcing them to pose for pictures. In contrast, their Canadian counterparts treat each migrant with dignity, including by barring journalists from taking photos of them when they are in custody.
Perreault-Magny, a father of a toddler, said he’s seen mothers carrying infants through the woods, their feet wrapped in aluminum foil to stave off the winter’s cold. He’s followed other groups through waist-deep snow for more than seven hours, worried about their safety even as he sought to arrest them.
He’s seen people require amputations due to frostbite. He’s encountered migrants who were abandoned in the forest by human traffickers when they couldn’t keep up. And he’s chased drug traffickers and gunrunners on snowmobiles across ice that threatened to crack beneath them. Few of the migrants and smugglers the Mounties encounter are armed.
Human rights groups seek better migrant treatment
An increasing source of tension between the United States and Canada is the treatment of people seeking asylum. Under that 2023 agreement, people who illegally cross from the United States into Canada for asylum are almost always returned, on the grounds that they will be treated equally by either country.
But Amnesty International and other human rights groups argue that the United States now routinely violates the human rights of detainees under Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement.
“Every day, people fleeing danger present themselves at the Canadian border, expressing grave fears about what will happen to them if they are returned to the U.S.,” said Asma Faizi, president of the Canadian Council for Refugees.
Amnesty International and the other groups are suing on behalf of a Honduran family whose members sought asylum in Canada last year after learning that the Trump administration had rejected their 2022 asylum claim in Maryland. The family – a couple and their young son – say that the Trump administration cancelled their asylum claim without explanation, and that to avoid being forced to return to their dangerous home country, they sought sanctuary in Canada.
Under the 2023 agreement, the family members were deported from Canada, held in a controversial family immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, for two weeks, then deported to Honduras, where they remain in hiding.
Canada does not use detention centers or camps the same way their southern neighbor does. Most people ordered deported from Canada leave voluntarily. Last year, about 23,000 people were issued “enforced removal” orders from Canada, and most of them flew home alone. About 1,840 people were escorted out of Canada last year, according to the Canada Border Services Agency.
Watching how the United States treats detainees horrifies many Canadians, said Julia Sande, an immigration attorney with Amnesty International.
“As policies change, as people are stripped of their status, as this chaos unfolds in the United States, if people no longer feel safe in the United States, of course they’re going to come to Canada,” Sande said. “We hear from people concerned all the time about what is happening in the United States. They watch in horror the masked deportation and detention, the intentional cruelty and chaos.”
Border-crossing is risky ‒ and sometimes deadly
In addition to patrolling the land border, Perreault-Magny and his colleagues also monitor the St. Lawrence River, which largely forms the border between the United States and Canada in northern New York. Dotted with small islands, the area is prime territory for smugglers of drugs, guns and people.
Recently, Perreault-Magny and his colleague, Sgt. Jonathan Maheu, cruised across the water in their patrol boat at about 35 mph, slowing to inspect passing boats. People would be surprised, Maheu said, at how often smugglers load a boat with people and act as if they aren’t about to cross the border.
In 2023, all four members of a Romanian family drowned when the boat in which they were riding sank during a March winter storm. U.S. prosecutors said the family was being smuggled from Canada into the United States via the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian reserve. The reserve sits in both Canada and the United States, and the overlapping jurisdictions can make smuggling easier, Maheu said.
“Some places, you can toss a bag full of guns across a stream and it’s over the border, or you take a 10-minute boat ride and drop off drugs,” he said.
Maheu and Perreault-Magny tied up briefly in the middle of the placid river with officers from the Akwesasne nation, a Tim Hortons coffee cup riding shotgun on their console. Perreault-Magny, who was about to be promoted and moved to a different nearby patrol sector, exchanged numbers with his counterparts so they could continue partnering.
“At the end of the day, we strive toward the same goal, so people on the ground work closely together,” Perreault-Magny said. “We need to have a good partnership and work together, and we do. That increases our chance to get the bad guys.”
American prosecutors also target human trafficking organizations on the Canadian border. On July 20, the Department of Justice announced that three Mexican men pleaded guilty to smuggling hundreds of people south from Canada into New York, then transferring them to the Midwest. The smugglers sometimes recruited their clients into the network to pay off their costs, prosecutors said, or persuaded them to make testimonial videos for prospective border crossers.
U.S. prosecutors have secured multiple guilty pleas this year from people caught using the Akwesasne nation territory to smuggle people into the United States. A Canadian-American citizen and member of the Akwesasne nation pleaded guilty on July 23 for her role in organizing a failed 2023 smuggling effort in which a Romanian couple and their two small children drowned while illegally crossing via the St. Lawrence.
“While most illicit flows of concern include fentanyl, firearms, human smuggling, and contraband goods, we remain vigilant against all threats to public safety and national security,” the U.S. Homeland Security Department said in a statement. “Our ongoing collaboration ensures both countries can respond effectively to risks and maintain the secure, efficient flow of legitimate trade and travel.”
On the New York-Canadian border about an hour south of Montreal, the three patrolling Mounties checked in with headquarters as they bounced across streams, mud puddles and downed limbs. They were traveling through a section known as “the cut” or “the slash.” Jointly maintained by both countries for about 1,300 miles, it’s a 20-foot-wide corridor marking the boundary. Only a few signs warn against illegal border crossing, and remote cameras monitor the forest on both sides.
U.S. and Canadian authorities sometimes unofficially meet to chat across the boundary line, trading information about trends they’ve seen. But most times, the patrols are quiet. Maheu launched a drone for an aerial perspective. Earlier, the group paused to watch colleagues in a helicopter fly circles close to the border, providing overwatch to those on the ground.
‘You feel for that mom that just wants … a better life’
The Mounties were comfortable with letting the migrants remain under the tree a few miles away, knowing their colleges were poised to arrest them.
Citing operational security, they declined to explain exactly what ultimately happened. But a few hours later, the migrants were in custody. And investigators were trying to track down the people who smuggled them in. The barracks’ holding cells in Valleyfield remained empty. The three Mounties headed home to their families.
“Behind our badge and uniform, you feel for that mom that just wants to get her daughter or her boy a better life, but there is stuff in place to come in Canada the legal way,” Perreault-Magny said. “Obviously, coming in the middle of the night or the middle of the day through the woods or through water is not the right way to enter a country legally.”