Airport refugee claims spike as thousands of ‘active warrants’ remain

Newly disclosed figures show the number of refugee claimants landing at Canada’s two largest airports has sharply increased in recent years, as the government struggles to process cases and remove people whose claims are rejected.

Around 72,000 people made refugee claims at airports between 2019 and 2023, according to numbers from the Immigration Refugee Board of Canada (IRB). That represents about 18 per cent of all refugee claims during that five-year period.

But even when cases are rejected, many claimants remain in Canada, new numbers from the Canada Border Services Agency show.

As of last month, the CBSA issued more than 28,000 “active warrants” to “failed refugee claimants.”

That number echoes reporting by Global News showing the government has also struggled to deport people found inadmissible to the country on national security grounds.

The main destination for the increase in claims by air travellers is Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport where the number of arrivals has increased nearly 10-fold between 2022 and 2023, according to the IRB.

Toronto’s Pearson Airport has seen refugee claims more than triple in that same period.

“It’s tiny when you compare it to refugee flows elsewhere in the world,” immigration and refugee lawyer Warren Creates told Global News.

“But these numbers are not numbers that Canada is accustomed to.”

Creates said it can take years to process cases because of significant backlogs, leaving refugee claimants in limbo. And when claims are rejected, the CBSA has “probably not done a good job knowing where all these people are and finding them,” he added.

The border agency and refugee claimant figures were released as part of answers to order paper questions filed in the House of Commons and