U.S. Plan to Revoke Visas for Asylum Seekers Puts Canada's Border Agreement Under Strain
The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the tourist and business visas of up to 200,000 foreign nationals who have applied for or are actively seeking asylum in the United States, which would make it the largest single mass visa revocation in U.S. history. The State Department has begun reviewing the plan, which targets B1 (business) and B2 (tourist) visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought or are now seeking asylum. Reuters, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and DW all reported the plan in late August 2026. Associated Press
The announcement is the latest in a series of measures that have steadily narrowed the U.S. asylum system since Trump's return to office. On his inauguration day in January 2025, Trump said an "invasion" at the U.S.-Mexico border justified extreme measures. That same day, he signed an executive order titled "Protecting The American People Against Invasion" that revoked prior provisions governing the safe and orderly processing of asylum seekers at the United States border. A companion order, "Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program," directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend decisions on refugee applications until a further finding is made. White House
Trump then indefinitely closed the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers, signed an executive order freezing refugee processing, and cut the U.S. annual refugee cap to a historic low. In June 2025, a further executive order fully suspended the entry into the United States of nationals of Afghanistan as immigrants and nonimmigrants. White House
For Canada, the visa revocation plan has direct implications for a bilateral agreement that governs how the two countries share responsibility for asylum claims. Under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, foreign nationals who have already claimed asylum in the United States are turned away at Canada's official border crossings, with limited exceptions, including for those who have family in Canada. The agreement rests on the idea that both countries run comparable refugee-protection systems and can be trusted to handle asylum claims fairly.
Immigration experts say the Trump administration has weakened that premise by eroding the rights of asylum seekers in the U.S. Lori Wilkinson, Canada Research Chair in Migration Futures at the University of Manitoba, said the visa revocation announcement may drive affected asylum seekers to try to enter Canada and that Ottawa should begin considering how to respond. Immigration lawyer Maureen Silcoff said a mass visa revocation would undermine the Safe Third Country Agreement to such a degree that Canada should consider pausing or cancelling it altogether. The Globe and Mail
The legal foundation of the agreement was tested before the Supreme Court of Canada in 2023. The Court upheld the Safe Third Country Agreement, ruling it could stand because it contained mechanisms for Canada to consider refugee status claims when turning someone away under the scheme would lead to a deprivation of liberty — meaning, in practice, if sending a person back to the U.S. would result in their detention. That decision, however, was based on how the U.S. asylum system operated at the time. The successive executive orders and the prospective revocation of 200,000 visas have changed the landscape the Court examined.
The broader context here is one of cumulative divergence between the two countries' asylum regimes. When the Supreme Court upheld the agreement in 2023, the U.S. system, however imperfect, retained procedural safeguards the Court found constitutionally sufficient in the Canadian context. The orders issued since January 2025 have dismantled or suspended several of those safeguards. The indefinite closure of the southern border to asylum seekers, the freeze on refugee adjudications, the reduction of the refugee cap to historic lows, and now the prospective mass revocation of visas held by people who have sought the protection of the U.S. system collectively raise the question of whether the United States can still be considered a "safe third country" in the sense the agreement and the Court's reasoning require.
For Canadian policymakers, the operational stakes are twofold. First, individuals whose visas are revoked and whose asylum claims remain pending in the U.S. may seek to enter Canada, either at official ports of entry or between them. Those who have already filed asylum claims in the U.S. would be ineligible to claim asylum at a Canadian port of entry under the Safe Third Country Agreement, subject to the existing family-member and other exceptions. That could redirect flow to irregular crossings, as occurred in significant numbers before the agreement was extended to the entire land border in 2023. Second, if Canada continues to treat the U.S. as a safe third country while its asylum infrastructure is being systematically curtailed, the federal government faces both a legal vulnerability and a political one: the former, if a future court challenge argues the factual basis of the 2023 ruling no longer holds; the latter, if turning away vulnerable claimants at the border becomes politically untenable.
Silcoff's call to pause or cancel the agreement is the most direct prescription from the immigration bar to date. Wilkinson's framing, that Ottawa should begin considering how to respond, is more cautious but points in the same direction: the visa revocation plan, if carried out, would place the Safe Third Country Agreement under stress it has not previously faced.
