Donald Trump may have campaigned on sealing the United States’s Southern border, but the first victims of America’s new, stricter border policies may have been a group of Canadian protesters looking to join anti-Trump marches in Washington DC.
The protesters — one of whom is a student at Montreal’s prestigious McGill University — say they were stopped by the US Border Patrol around 10pm Thursday night, trying to cross into New York. The students say that a Border Patrol agent asked them whether they were “anti- or pro-Trump” before denying them entry for “administrative reasons.”
The students, who definitely looked the part, then say that border guards asked if they had histories of violence, and whether they had recently traveled to the Middle East. After a brief respite, while border guards conferred, the students say they were told that they could not enter the US for the sole purpose of protesting.
A second group of Montreal citizens also say they were turned away after telling the Border Patrol that they intended to join Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington.
Although the US-Canadian border is fairly open and easy to cross, the US Border Patrol doesn’t necessarily have to let every traveler through — and they don’t have to give a reason (though you can file a formal appeal if you feel you’ve been wrongly denied entry).