Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) is a treaty with the United States that governs refugee claims at the Canada-US border. Under this agreement, refugee claimants must request refugee protection in the first safe country that they arrive in, unless they qualify for certain exemptions. As a result, most individuals arriving in Canada from the United States at an official land crossing “cannot claim asylum” (Gagnon et al., 2) and are returned to the U.S. to claim protection there. This decades-old policy has historically been justified as a “border security” measure (Gagnon et al…