Christopher Landry, a 43-year resident of Peterborough, is still in New Brunswick after being refused reentry to the United States while attempting to return from his annual trip to see his family in Canada July 5.
“Right now, I am just grateful I am not still detained by Border Patrol. If I had not had my kids with me at the time, I would still be detained, but they let me go,” Landry said Monday. “Border Patrol told me, ‘Do not come back to the border, or we will detain you.’ Right now, I’m just trying to balance everything out, trying to play two fields at once. I’m preparing for worst if I have to stay here, and I’m still trying to get back home.”
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers in Houlton, Maine, told Landry he was being refused entry because of two prior convictions for possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2004 and 2007.
“I have gone back and forth across the border at least 18 times since my convictions. At the time, I paid my fines, and I have not been in any further trouble. People have told me this have always been the law, but I guess they just ignored it for 18 years, because I have never had trouble at the border before,” Landry said.
Landry, who is a father of five, is a Canadian citizen and has a green card. His parents emigrated to Peterborough from New Brunswick when he was 3 years old.
“They said in Maine it was my lucky day that I had my kids with me, because they let me go,” he said. “They offered to let my son take my car and drive home with my other child, but I needed the car to get back to my Canadian family.”
Landry’s two older children are now home in Peterborough.
“I sent them home yesterday, and they are home safe,” he said.
Landry, who works for MilliporeSigma, said the trip to Canada was his third time traveling internationally since President Donald Trump’s administration began crackdowns on illegal immigration.
“I had two work trips to Ireland already this year without a problem,” Landry said. “In February, I put my prints into the scanner at the prescreening in Ireland, and they pulled me aside and then let me go, but in June, after the laws had changed, they told me in Ireland I was not eligible for the prescreening, and that I would have to change my trip, fly home through London and go through Customs in Boston.”
Landry said after changing his travel plans and “24 hours of panicking and wondering what was going to happen,” he arrived in Boston and went through Customs.
“In Boston, they scanned me and looked at my record and told me it was fine. They only asked one question, about whether I was bringing home alcohol, which I was not,” he said. “I did not think it would be a problem going to Canada over July 4 weekend, especially since I have done every year for the past 18 years.”
Landry said he asked the Customs officials who detained him in Maine why he had been permitted to return in June but was now being denied entry from Canada.
“They told me, ‘They’re not doing their jobs down in Boston,’” Landry said.
Landry is trying to find an immigration lawyer to take on his case.
“I’m hanging in there, but I’m really having a hard time getting through to a lawyer,” he said. “We don’t have $30,000 to hire an attorney, and getting pro bono help is difficult, because all the immigration lawyers are just being bombarded.”
Landry said he is mentally preparing himself for the possibility that he will not being able to come home any time soon.
“My family relies on me for food, shelter, everything. I can’t get home to work. I am a Canadian citizen, but it takes six months to go through the process of being able to work up here, and with the exchange rates, if I earn $1,000 here, I am only sending $500 back to the U.S.,” Landry said. “It won’t be easy to pick up a job to support my family from here.”
As Landry has shared his experience on social media, he’s fielded criticism that he supported the Trump campaign in 2024.
“People have told me ‘I got what I deserved’,” he said. “There is a lot of hate out there, a lot of keyboard warriors. The crazy thing is, a lot of stuff I posted were just jokes between me and my grandma. She’s more liberal, and I’m more conservative, so we went back and forth in a ‘meme war.’ We had a lot of fun going back and forth. People just blow things way out of proportion. And to be clear, I can’t vote, because I’m not a citizen, so I did not vote for Trump.”
Landry said he never would have expressed support for Trump if he had known how the president would “go after Canada.”
“Canada and the U.S. have always had a great relationship, always traded resources. Why would he go after Canada? I believe in legal immigration; my family has three generations of legal immigration,” Landry said. “But as far as Trump, I was fooled. If he had stood up there and said he was going to go after everyone with a green card, or if he said Canada was going to be a target — I never would have supported that.”
Landry said he is not particularly political, and his family is his top priority.
“The division in our country is so sad. In Canada, people are united, and there is so much patriotism, and people love their country. What has happened to this country is just heartbreaking. I believe in a safer America. I just want a good future for my kids, I want them to be safe; that’s my top priority,” Landry said. “I just wanted a stronger America. ”
Landry said despite some of the attacks online, for the most part, his family has been “overwhelmed” with kindness and support from the Peterborough community.
“People have just been amazing, and we can’t thank Peterborough enough,” he said. “I just have no words for how kind people have been.”