Three alleged human smugglers arrested in Quebec, 44 asylum seekers detained

Three alleged human smugglers have been arrested, along with 44 foreign nationals, after crossing into Canada from the United States over the August long weekend.

In a statement Monday, the Canada Border Services Agency said the group was detained on Haskell Road near Stanstead, Que., a town on the border between Quebec and Vermont, overnight Saturday to Sunday.

“Entering Canada illegally presents several risks and dangers, both legally and in terms of security of the person. Illegal entry into Canada is an offence that can result in arrest and criminal prosecution,” wrote Guillaume Bérubé, a spokesperson for the CBSA, in an email to National Post.

Ogulcan Mersin, 25, Dogan Alakus, 31, and Firat Yuksek, 31 have been charged under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for encouraging people to commit an offence, and the Customs Act, for assisting people to enter Canada outside of a designated customs office.

All three remain in custody.

As for the other people detained by police, each will be assessed to determine whether they are eligible to make asylum claims in Canada. Most have been transferred to the CBSA’s processing facility at Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que., Bérubé said.

Cpl. Erique Gasse said there was at least one child in the group detained — around four years old — and one of the women was pregnant.

The asylum seekers, he said, had been dropped off on the U.S. side of the border and traversed forest and streams to enter into Canada.

“So, a lot of time they get lost in the forest when they arrive in Canada,” said Gasse in an interview.

This group, once in Canada, met with the three alleged smugglers and were bundled into a 16-foot cube van. The RCMP said it does not know what the eventual destination was for the group. Upon discovery, Gasse said that it was incredibly hot inside the van and officers gave some water to them.

“The ending of that story is nice because they couldn’t breathe. It was pretty hot,” Gasse said.

Officers also gave emergency blankets to those who were wet and cold once they were outside, Gasse said. To his knowledge, none required medical attention.

Although he didn’t know its provenance, Gasse said Canadian authorities had received a tip about the group illegally entering Canada.

For several years, Canada has been dealing with tens of thousands of illegal border crossers coming into Canada along the undefended border with the United States, often at uncontrolled crossings.

So far in 2025, the CBSA has processed 22,237 asylum applications in Canada. That’s a 46-per-cent drop from 2024, when by the end of July there were more than 41,000 asylum claims made in the country.

Nearly 15,000 of those claims have been made in Quebec. So far, across Canada, 2,169 asylum claimants have been sent back to the United States for being ineligible to be in Canada. The two nations have an agreement, the Safe Third Country Agreement, which says that refugees must make a claim at their first country of entry. If they traverse the United States but do not make a claim and instead try to claim asylum in Canada they can return to the United States, unless they meet exceptions.

In recent months, asylum claims at the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing have become more and more frequent, so frequent that the CBSA has had to install eight processing trailers and four sanitary trailers to accommodate their needs should the numbers continue to grow.

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