The math of Canada’s immigration enforcement no longer works

When U.S. prosecutors unsealed indictments against 37 people tied to India-based crime syndicates earlier this month, they exposed a distinctly Canadian vulnerability: nearly every accused Bishnoi gang foot soldier arrested here entered from Punjab on a study or temporary work permit—many, the indictments allege, obtained with fraudulent information. As Hub senior correspondent Graeme Gordon reported, the years-long Operation Hard Ball investigation traces how Canada’s immigration system became a recruitment pipeline for transnational organized crime—one running through what criminologist Kelly Sundberg calls “a broken, and in places effectively non-existent, security screening process.” The gaps are structural. International students and most foreign workers face no routine requirement to submit police background checks—a fact then-immigration minister Marc Miller conceded in 2024, allowing only that officers may request certificates case by case. Ottawa’s recent tightening, with its financial thresholds, acceptance-letter verification, and intake cap, manages volume, not criminality. An applicant with no conviction and no watch-list entry, in law enforcements’ and partners’ databases, sails through regardless of associates, finances, or travel history. The Bishnoi gang, designated a terrorist entity in September 2025, grasped that arithmetic well enough to claim they now have more than 1,000 foot soldiers in Canada when it tried to intimidate Abbotsford police. Consider what the enforcement numbers actually imply. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) says roughly 550 investigators are tracking 33,000 foreign fugitives under deportation warrants—60 files per officer, including 726 associated with serious crimes. The agency removed more than 18,000 inadmissible people last fiscal year, a decade high, and is funded to reach 20,000 removals annually over the next two years. But most removals involve people who comply with their orders; the warrant inventory itself barely moves. Over the past two fiscal years, the agency closed 9,500 warrants while 7,000 new ones were added—a net reduction of roughly 1,250 a year. At that pace, clearing the existing backlog alone would take more than a quarter-century. Beneath the warrants sits a population without status that a federal Finance Department briefing pegged at up to 500,000: on paper, more than 900 people per officer, though nobody in government can actually count them. A CBSA vice-president likened the effort to bailing a bathtub while the tap runs. The consequences are measurable. Extortion has climbed more than 300 percent nationally over the past decade, and nearly 500 percent in British Columbia—and while just under half of reported incidents are cyber-related, it is the organized, violent variety concentrated in B.C., Alberta, and Ontario that has Surrey’s mayor asking Ottawa to declare a national state of emergency. The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada estimates that more than 4,000 organized crime groups now operate in Canada, up from more than 3,000 in 2022—a climb that partly reflects improved police reporting, but a climb all the same. Some South Asian families are returning to India because they judge it safer than Canada. None of this implicates the overwhelming majority of newcomers, who are law-abiding and who are organized crime’s primary victims. Their exposure is the sharpest measure of the failure. As Sundberg put it: “Canada expanded migration without expanding enforcement. We built a much larger system, but not a stronger one—and organized crime has taken advantage of that.” What these numbers describe, taken together, is an incentive structure. When 550 officers face 33,000 warrants—and net the pile down by barely a thousand a year—low removal figures signal not a low threat but a low probability of being caught, and syndicates recruit accordingly. If nothing changes, CISC’s estimate, already north of 4,000, will keep climbing; screening will remain conviction-based while the threats are network-based; and the next tranche of indictments will again be unsealed in an American courtroom rather than a Canadian one. The syndicates have already run these numbers. There is little evidence, so far, that Ottawa has. Hub editorials speak for economic competition and free markets, free speech, and national dynamism grounded in the people of Canada and their resilience. Fundamentally, The Hub cares about freedom: of expression, of thought, of association, and in economic relations. The recent indictments against individuals linked to Indian crime syndicates reveal significant vulnerabilities in Canada’s immigration enforcement system, which has become a recruitment avenue for organized crime. The lack of routine police background checks for international students and foreign workers, combined with inadequate enforcement resources, has led to a surge in organized crime activities. With over 4,000 organized crime groups now operating in Canada, the current immigration framework is failing to address the associated risks, prompting calls for a reevaluation of enforcement strategies to protect law-abiding newcomers and the broader community. How does Canada's immigration enforcement system contribute to organized crime? What are the implications of the growing number of organized crime groups in Canada? What changes are needed to improve Canada's immigration enforcement? Comments (0)