That ended when Canadian authorities decided, in advance of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, to barricade all the uncontrolled land border crossings between Quebec and New York, as well as the neighboring U.S. state of Vermont.

[6][12] The 2023 implementation of this "protocol" amending the agreement was seen as likely to stem the growth that had taken place since 2017 (other than during the pandemic shutdown of March 2020 to November 2021[6][13][14][15]) of Roxham Road being the entry point into Canada of large numbers of persons seeking asylum status.

A minor paved road, Roxham heads due north for 400 feet (120 m), then veers northwest, passing through fields and wooded areas interspersed with homes.

[19] Large boulders and a gate obstruct vehicular passage, signage indicates in English and French that the road is closed and pedestrian traffic prohibited, and a tall pole with a light and monitoring station used by the U.S. Border Patrol.

[24] Another 750 metres (2,460 ft) to the north at a T-intersection, it reaches Montée Glass, which runs east towards Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle and the southernmost exit on Quebec's Autoroute 15 (A-15), the continuation of Interstate 87 (I-87) connecting New York City and Montreal.

The U.S. did not reciprocate, even as the advent of Prohibition in the 1920s created a large market for illegal alcoholic beverages which bootleggers and rumrunners served, making use of the many unguarded roads across the border, such as Roxham, often at night.

In Canada, while such a border crossing can carry similar penalties it is only an administrative violation of the federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, and then only if the defendant has not reported to a customs station "without delay" or did not intend to.

[51] In 2010, a Thai freighter, the MV Sun Sea, was intercepted in Canadian waters off the coast of British Columbia with nearly 500 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees from their country's civil war, less than a year after another, smaller ship, the Ocean Lady had brought several dozen.

[52] While the use of Roxham and other irregular border crossings into Canada by refugees seeking asylum there would later be blamed on the Trump administration's immigration policies, it began, according to Queen's University researcher Christian Leuprecht, during Barack Obama's first term as U.S. president, when deportations increased.

Two Ghanaian refugees' frostbitten fingers had to be amputated after they spent a night at temperatures around −20 °C (−4 °F) buried to their waists in a snowbank;[56][g] another woman from their country was found dead in the snow a half-mile (800 m) south of the border.

After the 2010 earthquake there, the Obama administration granted Haitian nationals living in the U.S. temporary protected status (TPS), under which they did not have to worry about visa expirations and could bring family members to the U.S. from Haiti.

[32] The flow of refugees across the border at Roxham Road became a political problem for Trudeau as his critics and opponents suggested his government was being too permissive and had lost control of the situation.

Michelle Rempel Garner, official Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship critic for the Conservative opposition, suggested Trudeau had created a "crisis" with his January tweet he had been either unable or unwilling to substantially address.

"[85] Quebec's Official Opposition, the Parti Québécois, had also raised questions about the province's capacity to absorb the refugee influx, but had not gone as far as Legault had in calling for a more restrictive border policy.

Haitians dropped to 585, roughly a tenth of their 2017 total; the planned revocation of TPS late in 2017 was stayed pending litigation and almost a year later a U.S. federal judge enjoined the Trump administration from doing so.

[107] Two months later, the government included a provision in its annual budget bill intended to partially address the flow of refugees to Roxham Road and other irregular border crossings.

[112] He expressed concern that members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 had been able to enter Canada via Roxham, and called for the country to withdraw from the UN's Global Compact for Migration and renegotiate the STCA to apply to the entire border, not just ports of entry.

[7]: 26  In the election, Trudeau's Liberals lost their majority outright, as well as the popular vote by a small plurality to Scheer's Conservatives, but held on to enough seats in the House of Commons to form a minority government.

Both Peter Kent, the Conservatives' new immigration critic, and the Bloc Québécois, the PQ's federal counterpart, called for the government to shut down Roxham and the other illegal crossings completely.

[117] On March 20, the government announced that refugees crossing at Roxham and other locations between ports of entry would now be turned away entirely starting at midnight, invoking through several orders-in-council the emergency provisions of the Quarantine Act, 2005,[118] unless their claim involved one of the exceptions from the STCA.

Since the STCA prevented her from making the application at a port of entry,[p] she was returned to the U.S., whereupon she was taken into custody by the Border Patrol and held in a cold cell at Clinton Correctional Facility in nearby Dannemora for a month,[124] during which she was also fed pork in violation of her faith.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said that returnees from Canada were not likely to be removed if they had valid documentation to remain in the U.S.[135] IRBC recorded accepting the applications of 193 irregular entrants in the first quarter of 2021.

Justice David Stratas wrote unanimously for the three-judge panel that, as Glendon College's Michael Barutciski had suggested,[130] found McDonald's decision fatally flawed, primarily on procedural grounds.

Stratas suggested the claimants case was properly against the administrative procedures involved in making the decision to return Mustefa and the other applicants to the U.S., not the statute and regulations authorizing those processes, and for that challenge they did not have enough evidence.

Most were again refused and while some were detained by U.S. immigration authorities many were sheltered in hotels and apartments in Plattsburgh in the meantime; according to a local aid worker there were more than a hundred families in this situation at one point.

Sun columnist Lilley suggested that the real beneficiary of the reopening would be businesses and special interests on both sides of the border that promoted and benefited from the traffic at Roxham.

He allowed that the newly elected Biden Administration's lowered enthusiasm for enforcing deportation orders might reduce the flow as asylum seekers felt less urgency to enter Canada, but still reminded his readers that Roxham and the other irregular crossings were "outside the normal and legal channels" for immigrants.

[144] Legault asked the federal government to close the Roxham Road crossing in May, saying Quebec's public and private social resources to take care of them were being stressed.

Migrants told the MPI about dangerous passages through the Darién Gap in Panama, having to leave dead family members behind, being targeted by criminal gangs in Mexico and again risking their lives at the U.S. border.

Many Yemenis, Sudanese and Palestinians who came to Roxham Road had actually been living in Saudi Arabia before being expelled after their work permits were cancelled as part of that country's "Saudization" efforts to increase the native composition of its workforce.