Fresh footprints cut across the thick blanket of snow outside a small white house near the line dividing Canada and the United States.
For Canadian border officer Keven Rouleau, it’s a clear sign of illegal migration.
“They regularly run across the border,” he told AFP, which shadowed him on patrol.
In 2024, these southbound migrants numbered 21,000 — a drop in the ocean compared to the 1.5 million intercepted on the US border with Mexico.
Migrants who cross from Canada into the United States in the winter face dangerous conditions, with deep snow and high winds, and are often forced to abandon their vehicles to proceed on foot.
They are sometimes only lightly dressed and wearing “simple sneakers in 20 centimeters (nearly eight inches) of snow,” Rouleau said of the migrants, who sometimes hide under trees to avoid detection.
Canadian officers with bullhorns and powerful searchlights give chase, seeking to stop them from crossing the border, according to Rouleau.
Since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in a blaze of executive actions and rhetoric on immigration, the border has been thrust into the spotlight.
On Saturday he made good on his threats to impose tariffs on Canada — and Mexico — over the flow of migrants, as well as the smuggling of lethal drugs.
Canadian exports to the United States will now face a 25 percent tariff, although energy resources from Canada will have a lower 10 percent levy.
The meandering border between the neighbors is the longest in the world at 5,525 miles (8,891 kilometers) long. It is largely open without significant fencing and crisscrossed by thousands of miles of dense forests and farmland, and only a few rural roads.
Drug smuggling
Rouleau patrols a 200-mile stretch of the border in the province of Quebec.
Ten officers are on duty around the clock, either in vehicles to detect suspicious footprints in winter, or by monitoring feeds from surveillance cameras. They also field reports of suspicious activity from the local community.
Since Trump started to rail against Ottawa’s handling of border security, Canada has been at pains to insist that its frontier is nothing like the US border with Mexico.
Nonetheless Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly rolled out a Can$1.3 billion ($894 million) border security plan.
To much fanfare, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) unveiled two Black Hawk helicopters, repainted in police colors from their former US Army camouflage, that will help with “rapid intervention.”
An RCMP spokesman insisted there was no migration “crisis” and that “the situation is entirely under control.”
Canadian authorities say the number of crossings from their side of the line to the United States has dropped 90 percent since last summer.
US Customs and Border Protection stats show that 42 pounds (19 kilograms) of potentially deadly fentanyl was seized last year entering the country from Canada, compared to 21,160 pounds from Mexico.
Rouleau, the Canadian border officer, said that while the concern of local people has been palpable since Trump’s reelection, his job has remained the same.
“It’s the status quo,” he said.
Jody Stone, mayor of Stanstead, a small Canadian town in Rouleau’s patch, said “the border is quiet.”
Residents have become accustomed to the presence of surveillance cameras clandestinely fitted to utility poles, she said, allowing officers to detect and monitor illegal activity.
