Frostbite and fear: Inside a journey into Canada with human smugglers

Those who travel by car between the U.S. and Canada at crossings like the Peace Bridge have grown accustomed to long wait times over the years, but drivers headed in either direction today rarely face delays. Those empty lanes signal a stark change: Cross-border travel has fallen to historic lows, surpassing even the slowdowns seen after 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis. “We are currently seeing more extreme drops in travel by car than we did during those (earlier) crises,” says Laura Presley, an analyst at Statistics Canada, noting an “abrupt shift” at the start of this year....