It’s been a bleak start to a year of certain struggle. Within hours of Donald Trump’s inauguration, his administration made good on a staggering array of campaign threats against many of the most vulnerable populations in the United States and abroad—signing executive orders against trans people, immigrants, and other prominent scapegoats of MAGA’s ruling class agenda.
Yet in this moment of far-right resurgence, Canada’s response to Trump’s rhetoric has been one of collaboration and encouragement. When Trump attempted to pin the deathly impact of the opioid crisis in the United States on immigration, assigning blame to Canada and Mexico and threatening tariffs, our federal and provincial governments fell rapidly in line, pledging enormous resources to the maintenance of MAGA’s xenophobic protectionism from the Canadian side.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew quickly pledged conservation officers and vehicle inspectors to the border (despite concerns from representative unions), as well as an intensified RCMP presence. While the NDP continues to entertain the idea of a dedicated RCMP border patrol, his present orders only play into law enforcement’s well-established overtime racket: inflating pensions and permitting police associations to portray operational overreach as a necessary sacrifice to the public good.
This is a large expense, which Kinew frames as a roundabout investment in ongoing trade relationships with the US: under the Police Services Agreement, Manitoba is responsible for 70% of the RCMP’s operating expenses, with the remaining 30% falling to the federal government. Meanwhile, Ottawa has pledged $1.3 billion to the bolstering of Trump directives, investing in police officers, border guards, drones, and canine units. This investment includes a large outlay on aerial surveillance, including a pair of Black Hawk helicopters—which debuted above the Manitoba border on January 19th, just in time for Trump’s second term.
These Black Hawks join a pre-existing fleet of nine RCMP helicopters, six of which are already assigned to border patrol. At present, the precise operating cost and base of the helicopters is unclear, though the RCMP confirms that they are on lease from Helicopter Transport Services in Ottawa. “The helicopters will have police officers on-board who can quickly respond to any location near the border where illegal activity may be taking place,” says a release from the RCMP Federal Policing Northwest Region. “In addition, the helicopter can help direct Integrated Border Enforcement Team officers, who patrol the Manitoba border in vehicles, to any suspicious activity.”
This costly aerial surveillance complements a range of proposed legal restrictions, as the Canadian government pledges to increase scrutiny of visas for visitors, international students, temporary foreign workers, asylum seekers, and families of all of the above. The Government of Canada briefing on these new measures boasts that asylum claims have significantly fallen, while visitors from “high-risk countries” are being refused at increasing rates. In sum, Canada’s recent measures to strengthen border security closely align with global trends toward intensified xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrants, following a cascade of far-right electoral wins.
By the RCMP’s own account, the number of illegal crossings between ports of entry on the US-Canada border will only increase as a result of US policy. Trump’s intensified threats of legal action against immigrants will surely expedite unauthorized and dangerous passages in all seasons, and Canada’s official duplication of US policy, in the Safe Third Country Agreement and more recent measures to placate the US market, promise only greater brutality for those attempting the trip. Drug smuggling, a trope which the right frequently deploys in order to criminalize select groups, is hardly a concern. As the government admits, fentanyl and its various analogues typically arrive through the postal system anyway. Once again, a touted War on Drugs offers nothing but repression and distraction, entirely missing the mortal issue of toxic supply.
Spokespeople for the Manitoba RCMP's Integrated Border Enforcement Team frame the necessity of canine units, drones, and helicopters as if they were tasked preemptively with search-and-rescue, citing the large numbers of people who face hypothermia and even death attempting to cross to or from the US. The cynicism is astounding, while we hear nothing of the deportations and detainment that await—the very fate that drives so many undocumented workers and families to risk their lives on either side of the border, rather than submit to prejudicial scrutiny. Without comprehensive amnesty for these vulnerable people, there will be no end to such horrible outcomes; yet Canada continues down the path of a restrictive immigration policy that looks suspiciously like MAGA by neighbourly means.
The intensification of border security—and of an aerial surveillance that has eyes on rural Manitoba, too—is clearly a political decision, and directly follows from Canada’s courtship of the US far-right. Still there has been no serious criticism of this development from any party in parliament, nor in the Manitoba Legislature. In Manitoba, Conservative opposition has expressed concern at the use of conservation officers while supporting the need for more police in principle. Federally, NDP MP Brian Masse has only spoken out against the novelty of it all—“focusing on gadgets and gimmicks, as opposed to boots on the ground.”
Watching Wab Kinew and other provincial leaders navigate the transition to Trump 2.0, one can see how quickly US imperialism has succeeded in pulling the entire Canadian political spectrum to the hard right, and this collaboration has only just begun. The broad political consensus for a more securitized border is a chilling harbinger of what’s to come, even as it culminates a distinctly Canadian history of xenophobic immigration policy. There’s no clearer sign of this rightward shift, on the border as throughout our cities, than the rapid expansion of policing and its technological means.
It should be clearly said: “security” at the border has nothing whatsoever to do with safety, but functions as a nakedly discriminatory mechanism of economic control, practiced by way of a displaced and vulnerable section of the working class. Buying new toys for police not only does nothing for safety; it actively endangers migrants, as targeted reforms to immigration law push greater numbers of people to attempt desperate passages. This Black Hawk acquisition, already audible above so many towns, must be reversed alongside all it represents—by an explicitly anti-fascist movement against Trumpism and its local brokers, and as great a push toward regularization for all.