After a high-level meeting Friday afternoon in Ottawa between Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and his Canadian counterpart, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, both men are “perplexed” about the raging refugee crisis on the U.S.-Canada border, according to Kelly.
Goodale says the meeting left many questions unresolved.
“Who are the people who are involved in this migration? Where did their journey begin from?” he asked. “How long have they been in or transiting through the United States?”
Kelly, the first member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet to visit Canada, came expressly to discuss the growing influx of illegal refugees streaming from the U.S. into Canada at unofficial border crossings.
He says what is most confusing is why most of the “asylum seekers” who are sneaking across the Canadian border at remote crossings in Quebec and Manitoba were in the United States legally and apparently had no reason to leave.
The Homeland Security secretary emphasized that the majority who did leave had their visas in order.
“Everyone was perplexed,” Kelly told The Canadian Press in an interview.
Goodale declared his resolve to work with the United States to get the “hard facts” about why the illegal refugees are streaming into Canada, saying “The critical thing is to make sure that we have a complete and detailed picture on both sides of the border about what exactly is happening here.”
Goodale reminded reporters, “This is still relatively early in the process.”
However, according to a CBC report this week, the origins of the many of the would-be refugees is well-known. The majority of the illegals crossing the border at Emerson, Manitoba, on the border with North Dakota, are coming from Minneapolis, Minnesota, where there is a large Somali community.
Somali Mohamud Noor, executive director of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, has even cautioned his fellow expatriates from trying to make the journey across the border into Canada in sub-zero temperatures and blizzards.
The illegal refugees are now arriving in a third province, British Columbia. According to two government officials who spoke off the record to The Canadian Press, many of those entering through Quebec possess U.S. visas that were issued at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After interviewing the refugees, they say the migrants are only using the U.S. as a stop-off point on their way to Canada.
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