U.S. and Canada expected to announce agreement on turning away asylum seekers

President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are expected to announce an agreement on Friday that would allow both the United States and Canada to turn away asylum seekers who cross their borders without authorization, two U.S. officials confirmed to NBC News.

The agreement will likely follow an extensive bilateral meeting in Ottawa, where migration will be a main topic of conversation between the two heads of state.

The deal, reported earlier Thursday by the Los Angeles Times, would apply to people without U.S. or Canadian citizenship caught within 14 days of crossing the U.S.-Canada border.

Canada will also commit to take in an additional 15,000 migrants next year from the Western Hemisphere on a humanitarian basis, a U.S. official told NBC News.

© Sebastien St-Jean A migrant is searched by a police officer after arriving at the Roxham Road border crossing in Roxham, Quebec, Canada, on March 2, 2023. - In 2022, the number of asylum seekers who crossed into Quebec via this road exceeded 39,000, doubling a previous record from 2017. (Sebastien St-Jean / AFP - Getty Images)

Illegal crossings into the U.S. from Canada have climbed to historically high levels, though still a fraction of the crossings into the U.S. from Mexico.

At the Swanton Sector of the U.S. border, which covers New Hampshire, Vermont and a portion of northern New York, illegal border crossings increased by a factor of 10 during a recent five-month stretch compared to the same period last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

From Oct. 1 to Feb. 28, about 2,000 migrants were apprehended crossing the border illegally in the sector, compared to just 200 in the same period the previous year.

Mexicans desperate to get into the U.S. have been flying to Canada to attempt to cross the border in frigid temperatures, NBC News has reported. The U.S. has started flying migrants apprehended at the northern border south to Texas, and earlier this month CBP transferred 25 extra agents to the northern border.

Also concerning border crossings, the U.S. and Canada are poised to apply terms of an existing “safe third country agreement” to asylum seekers who cross between ports of entry, the U.S. official told NBC News on Thursday.

That agreement means that someone has to apply for asylum in the first safe country they arrive at, with exceptions — as opposed to going to Canada and then the U.S., or vice versa.

When asked to comment on the expected agreement, a spokesperson for Canada’s department that handles immigration and refugees said the U.S. and Canada “are engaged on all aspects of irregular migration, including the Safe Third Country Agreement."

"We will continue to work with the U.S. on this and other areas of border cooperation,” the spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said.

Biden this week is making his first presidential visit to Canada, where Trudeau has offered to help the Biden administration in stanching the flow of migrants entering Canada from the U.S. and claiming asylum.

Since 2017, Canada has seen an increase in people claiming asylum after crossing the border at unofficial crossings from the U.S., the CBC has reported.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com