HUNTER: CBSA officers put border blame on Trudeau, refugee board
'It's been a very frustrating few years. The Liberals are backtracking but the damage has been done'
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Criminals, grifters, aspiring terrorists, extremists and other less-than-savoury characters have washed onto Canadian shores in a tsunami of stupidity over the past decade.
And then, we can’t get rid of them.
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HUNTER: CBSA officers put border blame on Trudeau, refugee board Back to video
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Earlier this week, I lambasted the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) for the situation that has become nothing short of a full-blown crisis.
But CBSA frontline workers were quick to respond. Don’t blame us, a number of them wrote me.
Blame Justin Trudeau’s open-doors Liberal government and an Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) packed with “radical left ideologues.” Officers say they have essentially been handcuffed from making decisions that keep Canadians safe.
“Want to know why and how all that trash enters? Don’t blame us, the officers. Blame this open border government that has tied our hands with whom we can detain and why,” one CBSA staffer wrote.
“Blame the fact that all those criminals are in the country on garbage asylum claims. Once they say the magic word ‘refugee,’ they’re released.
“Blame the IRB and, finally, blame the spineless CBSA management that is more worried about what the (Toronto) Star and Refugee Law Office will say if they detain these ‘poor marginalized people.'”
Another border guard said that officers do their jobs. They refuse entry to criminals and other suspicious people whose stories don’t add up.
“But they say ‘refugee’ and it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card,” the anonymous guard said. “We detain these individuals and the Liberal IRB members release them ALL within 48 hours, they then have their first detention review.”
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Higher up the food chain, the agency’s top brass are allegedly pressuring officers to “release everyone.” The horizon looks worse when CBSA will be unable to detain foreign criminals in provincial jails after September 2025.
The officer said frontline workers are “being forced to consider every single alternative to detention. If (Osama) bin Laden was detained and has family in Canada, he would be released on a bond to his family.”
“Classifying CBSA as the friend you don’t want is unfair to all of us frontline officers who work hard every day with refusing and detaining but once they leave the port of entry they are released into the public,” he said, adding “a refugee claimant with criminal charges will be released for two to three years before their claim is heard.”
“From automatic visa approvals to releasing everyone this is all thanks to Liberals. Frontline works hard but unlike the criminals, our hands are tied, the criminals’ hands are not and they are free to roam.”
Another officer said the trio of Chileans recently busted for a slew of break-ins in Ontario slipped into the country on someone else’s passport. The machines now used by CBSA let them in.
“They are trying to automate everything, so more of this garbage will be coming in as they expand the PIK machines. (Primary Inspection Kiosks). The pandemic resulted in a visa application program where everyone got the green light — even blank pages,” he said. “It didn’t matter if there was nothing on them.
“This is why we have a million Indian students — 90% of these would never be approved if they were reviewed by a visa officer.”
Even when officers suspected that someone on a visitor’s visa had no intention of leaving, refusal was not an option.
“Unless they had criminal charges they admitted to, it was hands-off, let them all in. We would be getting 100 refugee claimants a day and 90% were coming on student visas with zero intention to study and many not speaking a word of English,” the officer noted.
“It’s been a very frustrating few years. The Liberals are backtracking but the damage has been done. It’ll take years for Canada to catch up, and remove these people.”
In a statement to the Toronto Sun, CBSA said: “Border security and integrity is a shared mandate between the CBSA and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Canada. The CBSA is responsible for enforcing the law at designated ports of entry in Canada and the RCMP is responsible for enforcing Canadian legislation between ports of entry.
“When persons crossing into Canada between ports of entry are intercepted by the RCMP or local police, they are brought to a designated port of entry for examination. Once at the port of entry, if the individual claims asylum, the CBSA will then determine whether or not the claim is eligible under the STCA and the AP and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.”
@HUnterTOSun
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