A Haitian family was separated at the Quebec-U.S. border this spring due to what an immigration lawyer calls a "legal glitch" some fear could become a wider problem as more migrants flee the United States into Canada. 

The family attempted to enter Canada at the official land crossing in Lacolle, Que., in March, according to immigration documents. 

After reviewing their case, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers allowed only the father in because he has a close relative in Canada. His pregnant wife and seven-year-old daughter were turned away. 

Three weeks later, facing pregnancy complications, the mother paid smugglers nearly $4,000 to get herself and her daughter across the border on foot through melting snow to reunite with the father. 

"The border agent should never have separated that family," said Paule Robitaille, a Montreal-based immigration lawyer who has been working on their case. 

Advocates and lawyers fear family separation could become more common as more migrants in the United States seek asylum in Canada through exceptions outlined in a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Canada, and border services face pressure to limit the number of arrivals. 

WATCH | More asylum seekers are showing up to the Lacolle, Que., border this summer: 

Refugee claims rise at Lacolle, Que., border despite overall drop in asylum seekers entering Canada

The Canada Border Services Agency says it registered more than 3,000 requests for asylum at the crossing in July 2025, compared to 600 last July.

Smuggling only option, says father

The father says the family decided to come to Canada after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to end a humanitarian program his predecessor Joe Biden created to prevent people from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from being deported due to turmoil in their countries. 

It's under that program that the man's wife and daughter arrived in the U.S. in 2024, three years after he claimed asylum there. 

CBC has agreed not to name the family due to threats the couple have faced in Haiti related to denouncing corruption and sexual violence through their work. 

After the mother and daughter were turned away at the Canadian border in March, a migrant rights organization helped pay for a hotel room in Plattsburgh, N.Y., as they worked to find legal pathways for the family to be reunited, according to Frantz André, an advocate for asylum seekers who has been helping the family.

Eventually, the father said in an interview, his wife met someone in Plattsburgh who told her she could pay smugglers to get into Canada. If she managed to evade authorities for 14 days, she could remain in Canada under an exception to the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).

The STCA — which was broadened in scope in 2023 following pressure on the Canadian government to limit asylum — prevents people from making an asylum claim at a Canada-U.S. land crossing. It states that asylum seekers must seek protection in the first country they land in, the U.S. or Canada. 

The current exceptions to the STCA include having a close family member in Canada, being an unaccompanied minor, or going undetected in the country for 14 days. 

At the border, the CBSA found that the father could enter Canada because of his uncle in B.C., but also found him ineligible to claim asylum because he had already done so in the U.S., according to an immigration document signed by a border agent. 

The document says the father could therefore not act as what's called an "anchor" relative to his wife and child — a decision two immigration lawyers interviewed by CBC say should not have led to the family's separation. 

The father is now only eligible to apply for a pre-removal risk assessment (PRRA) — where immigration officials determine whether a person is at risk of persecution, danger of torture and risk to life if returned to their country. Success rates on this path are significantly lower than for asylum seekers, who have access to an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing.

Beyond the Plattsburgh hotel room, the mother knew detention and deportation at the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) likely awaited her and her daughter. She decided to risk the crossing on foot. 

"We realized it was our only option," the father said.

Shivering and soaking wet

The mother and daughter were taken by car at night to the edge of a forest near the border in early April where they began to walk with a group of seven or eight other migrants. 

The group walked for hours through the woods across small waterways and in melting snow. Once across, the migrants were ushered into a van that sped off toward Montreal, the father recounted. His wife, who is now seven months into a high-risk pregnancy that required surgery, declined to give an interview, saying the details of the crossing were too upsetting to revisit. 

CBC has viewed immigration documents belonging to the couple that match the story the father shared in an interview. 

"My daughter fell and was covered in scratches. They had to turn around several times," after making wrong turns, the father said, adding there was an infant in the group. 

The mother and daughter were shivering and soaking wet when the father picked them up. The family stayed with a friend in the city for 14 days before heading to British Columbia's Fraser Valley to meet with the father's uncle. 

The family now has weekly check-ins with immigration officials, but find themselves in a kind of limbo. They are protected from deportation to Haiti because Canada has issued a moratorium on removals to the country, but are struggling to gain status that would allow them to work here.  

In the U.S., the father who has a university degree from Haiti, worked in social services. 

"They're … very, very vulnerable," said Robitaille, their lawyer. "Everything is very complicated now."

Restricting access to asylum 

Typically, the close-relative exception to the STCA allows families to enter together; whichever person has the relative in Canada becomes their spouse and children's anchor, said Maureen Silcoff, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer and former decision-maker at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB). 

"People who are turned back at the border in this type of circumstance are subject to what I would call a legal glitch," Silcoff said, referring to the Haitian family's situation. 

She believes the glitch is an oversight in the definition of anchor relative outlined in the Safe Third Country Agreement — which doesn't include pre-removal risk assessment (PRRA) applicants like the father. 

It's a complicated technicality that could prevent people with valid reasons to seek protection in Canada from being able to have their cases considered, both Robitaille and Silcoff say.

Border agents are required under a 2023 Supreme Court of Canada decision to consider options it called "safety valves" that could, for example, prevent a family from being divided. 

"There's no rational reason why the family member of [PRRA applicants] should not be allowed to come into Canada," Silcoff said. 

But Robitalle, the family's lawyer, worries the glitch could be a way for CBSA agents to clamp down on the number of arrivals at the border at a time when they may be under scrutiny amid tensions between the U.S. and Canada to tighten immigration and border control. 

"Do the agents have more pressure to be stricter because there's more entries? Most probably," said Robitaille, who is planning to appeal the CBSA agent's decision. 

CBSA did not provide a response to CBC's questions by deadline about whether agents are encouraged to avoid separating families, or what procedures the agency has in place to prevent that from happening.

A 2017 document titled National Directive for the Detention or Housing of Minors published on the CBSA's website states that the agency must not separate families except in extremely rare cases. It's not clear how this applies when the minor remains with one parent but not both.

There have been mounting calls for Canada to reconsider its stance that the U.S. is a safe country for refugees since Trump ordered ICE agents to conduct widespread raids, arrests and deportations, including to third countries, such as to a prison in El Salvador where there have been reports of torture. 

So far, Canada has instead sought to tighten asylum rights at its border. In June, Prime Minister Mark Carney's government submitted the Strong Borders Act, a wide-ranging bill that would further restrict asylum claims at Canada's land border.