Senior border official says agency lost 32,000 illegal immigrants

The Canada Border Services Agency cannot account for at least 32,000 illegal immigrants who evaded the agency’s attempts to arrest and deport them.

Source: X

The Canada Border Services Agency cannot account for at least 32,000 illegal immigrants who evaded the agency’s attempts to arrest and deport them.

Erin O’Gorman, the president of the CBSA, told Conservatives during a House of Commons Public Safety Committee meeting on Thursday that the border security agency is “actively engaging” at least 30,000 individuals to deport, while it can’t locate 32,000 who have active warrants.

Conservative justice critic Frank Caputo first grilled Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, asking about the 30,000 individuals that CBSA Vice-President Aaron McCrorie told MPs Wednesday were being pursued for deportation.

When asked how many “foreign nationals are awaiting deportation in Canada,” Anandasangaree told Caputo he’d “get back” to Caputo on that. Caputo raised McCrorie’s comments, saying 30,000 individuals was “shocking,” but the fact that the Public Safety minister was ignorant of the numbers was even more shocking.

“There are 30,000 people who are going through the system, and they’re going to be removed; they are in the queue. We know their addresses. We know where they reside. Many of them have reporting requirements,” Anandasangaree claimed. “They regularly report to our CBSA offices across Canada. There’s sometimes telephone reporting, so there’s ongoing monitoring for those who are being removed, I bet, not in all cases, but for the vast majority.”

But when O’Gorman was questioned, she revealed that the original 30,000 individuals were only those the agency was “currently engaging,” and that the CBSA actually lost, in a separate category, at least 32,000 individuals with active warrants for deportation.

“We are looking for them, and I will point out these, as I said, are points in time. And so, since we last met, we have removed more of those people on warrant. And then, unfortunately, we have had people who have absconded. These are fluid,” O’Gorman said. “There are 500 CBSA officers doing excellent work all of the time to remove these individuals.”

O’Gorman said the data has been available on the CBSA website, and the numbers aren’t “secret,” though the last update was in July 2025.

According to the data referenced by O’Gorman, there were 30,733 foreign nationals marked as “removals in progress” and 32,749 “wanted” individuals who failed to appear for removal proceedings and who the CBSA are “working to locate,” as of July 2025.

Nearly 22,432 individuals were marked as individuals who could not be removed due to “but not limited to” pending federal court appeals, pre-removal risk assessments or who were currently serving prison sentences. Migrants set to be deported can request a pre-removal risk assessment to make the case that deporting them would put their safety at risk.

The data, however, states that 12,697 removals were enforced as of July this year, indicating that either 5,000 deportations have taken place or that numbers from the previous fiscal year are being incorporated into the government’s 18,000 deportation count.

The data also shows 452,925 individuals marked as “inactionable” because they “fall outside of the enforcement stream.” According to the website, these individuals are tracked in the inventories because, if immigration processes fail for them, they could face deportation. It says these include “but are not limited to” individuals who have a pending refugee application or who have been recognized as a refugee in Canada.”