President Joe Biden's agreement with Canada: flying 82 migrants back to Texas

President Joe Biden speaks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin TrudeauPhoto byTwitter

President Joe Biden visited Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and came to an agreement to reduce the number of migrants crossing the northern border. They agreed to close down a popular crossing point that migrants have used.

The Roxham Road Crossing between New York and Canada will be closed.

In addition, Ottawa will accept 15,000 migrants who legally apply for asylum.

Canada is seeing 10 times the number of migrants coming from New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Abdulla Daoud, executive director of the Refugee Centre in Montreal said:

“Asylum seekers on our borders is not something that Canada typically deals with. This is in many ways a new issue. And while there’s been an uptick, there’s no denying that, we’ve seen that Canada’s immigration infrastructure can handle an increase in population – but the asylum system wasn’t ever built to accommodate this sort of issue.”

Last month, Trudeau said:

“The challenge is not to say, ‘Oh, we should close it.’ The challenge is, how to close it, how to make sure that people aren’t choosing to cross irregularly into Canada, to protect the integrity of our immigration system but also stay true to the values that we have.”

A year ago, the Canadian border crisis was not an issue.

From October to February, Canada apprehended 2,000 migrants. A year ago, there were about 200 migrants.

Former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Gil Kerlikowske said:

"The whole northern border issue wasn't nearly as much on the radar."

US officials flew two flights of migrants from Canada to Texas - one on March 13 to Harlingen, Texas, and another on March 21 to El Paso. A total of 82 migrants were flown.

A CBP spokesperson said:

“Individuals will receive final processing at CBP [southwest border] facilities. All of these individuals were recently apprehended by [the U.S. Border Patrol] after crossing the northern U.S. border. These transfers are done to decompress facilities and better utilize resources and personnel.”

Do you think this was a good plan that President Biden agreed to with Canada?