The relationship between Detroit and Windsor is a microcosm of what’s been happening in recent weeks between the U.S. and Canada. President Donald Trump’s constant threat of tariffs and annexation have brought heated rhetoric and international tension.

It’s affecting the lives — and vibes — of Windsorites.

“It is getting tense, and it is getting very stressful on this side of the border, and you can actually feel it,” said Rino Bortolin, a former Windsor City Councilor. He owns Petrella’s, a sandwich shop in the Ford City neighborhood.

Bortolin isn’t alone. WDET approached more than a dozen Windsorites to ask them how they were taking the recent stress in Canada-U.S. relations. People had thoughts — but were often hesitant to have them recorded. But off the record, they expressed a mixture of disbelief and disappointment.

Bortolin says the whole ordeal has been difficult.

“We’ve got season tickets to Detroit City FC soccer [and we are] over there, quite a bit with friends family,” Bortolin said. “So I’m trying to separate the people versus what’s happening at the government level. But it is very difficult.”

DCFC’s home opener was Saturday. But Bortolin says the bad vibes are keeping folks from crossing the border.

“I’ve got four tickets. Kids probably can’t come. It’s been hard to find three people to fill those seats,” Bortolin said. “So people that go regularly for concerts, cultural events, dining, other events where they even know people over in Detroit, even they’re putting a hard stop on on going over and crossing at all.”

And that’s not just anecdotal. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show crossings dropped last month by 470,000 when compared to February 2024.

The last time crossings were this low was 2020, during the early days of COVID.

That sounds about right to Sarah Dewar, the owner and sommelier at Maiden Lane, a Windsor wine and cocktail bar.  

“I feel after the pandemic, it’s finally been rebounding,” said Dewar. “We’re getting the American tourism again, and it’s really disappointing to think that these positive gains we’ve made will be reversed.”

Dewar knows it can be tough to get people to make the trip.

“I think as Windsorites, living on a border city, we pay attention to what’s going on in Detroit, whereas Detroit doesn’t necessarily pay attention to what’s going on over here,” Dewar said. “U.S., Canada, you could say the same thing.”

In response to American tariffs, some Canadians have focused on using goods made in their country, and calling for a boycott of ones made in the U.S. For a bar owner, that means an embargo on products like American whiskey.  

However, Dewar says it’s difficult given the close ties between countries, industries, and people.

“You know, I can’t get on board with a full-on boycott of all things American,” Dewar said.

She’s worried it might get worse.

“I hate the division that it has the potential to cause between just the average person. You know, we have friends. We’ve created relationships with people over there in the same industry, and we love going to visit them,” Dewar said.

“We love it when they come over here. And I hope, I hope that we can repair it. I don’t think it’s too far gone.”

Still, the situation is seen as disrespectful to an ally and neighbor who has dealt with a lot.  

Member of Parliament Brian Masse is with the New Democratic Party.  He’s represented the Windsor West riding for more than two decades and is running in next month’s federal elections.

“We were the ones going over to Detroit to support the businesses in Greektown and the sports culture and so forth, when people said it was not even safe to visit,” Masse said. “So right now, there’s a sense of fatigue from our citizens because of the insults going on with regards to Trump.”

Masse knows the importance of a healthy Great Lakes ecosystem and has been working on getting the Ojibway Prairie Complex—a stretch of Windsor along the river across from Zug Island—designated a National Urban Park.

“Those things are at risk, and so we’re going to need to see people step up and figure out that it just can’t be taken for granted, the [U.S. / Canada] relationship anymore, because the constant elements coming out of the White House and the confusion is going to cost real jobs, cost real friendships, and it’s going to take away from our quality of life,” Masse says.

Because of that, Masse doesn’t blame Canadians for expressing their frustration with the U.S. via their wallets.  

“The problem that we have here, though, is for people to actually think about getting in their car or going on a trip into the US and potentially face some of this stuff is exhausting, and they have other options.”

Those options are fully on display at Valente Travel next door to Masse’s office on Ouelette Avenue.

Travel agent Melanie Harding says many Canadians are rerouting their big trips.

“We have had some cancelations,” Harding says. “Some people feel strongly about it, where others are still willing to travel.”

But don’t count Harding among those who are discouraged from going to the U.S.

“I’m going to New Orleans,” Harding says. “It’s our anniversary, so I’m not putting that on hold for anyone.”

Windsorite Edward Semenski isn’t phased either. When asked by WDET if he wants Canada to become the 51st U.S. state: “Sure, why not?”

Semenski, who was reading a Bible when approached by WDET, says he appreciates Trump’s Christian values. Still, he doesn’t plan to cross the border anytime soon.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to go to the U.S.,” Semenski says. “I have a criminal record, even though I used to live in Detroit.”

However, Semenski says he’s holding out hope.

“I’m gonna get a try to get a pardon first before I try going over there.”

For as tight as the two countries have been historically, something feels off. Call it a vibe shift.

Bortolin says the honeymoon is definitely over.

“I think this will be something that causes generational harm and a shift from the relationship,” Bortolin says.

“It’s like your partner cheats on you the one time, and…it can’t go back after that. And it’s like, there’s always something in the back of your mind. And this is one of those things that will always be in the back of our minds.”

A recent pro-Canada demonstration drew hundreds to Detroit’s Hart Plaza and to the base of the giant Canadian flag along the Windsor riverfront. It was a show of support on both sides of the border – and a reminder that Americans and Canadians can still be good neighbors… even when the U.S government isn’t.

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday temporarily blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement Sunday, responded to speculation about whether the administration was flouting court orders: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory.”

The acronym refers to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump targeted in his unusual proclamation that was released Saturday

In a court filing Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg’s decision, said it would not use the Trump proclamation he blocked for further deportations if his decision is not overturned.

Trump sidestepped a question over whether his administration violated a court order while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening.

“I don’t know. You have to speak to the lawyers about that,” he said, although he defended the deportations. “I can tell you this. These were bad people.”

Asked about invoking presidential powers used in times of war, Trump said, “This is a time of war,” describing the influx of criminal migrants as “an invasion.”

Trump’s allies were gleeful over the results.

“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.

“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck said.

The immigrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were “taken over” by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers.

The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.

Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend down at the waist.

The video also showed the men being transported to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.

The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele’s push to pacify his once violence-wracked country through tough police measures and limits on basic rights

The Trump administration said the president actually signed the proclamation contending Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but didn’t announce it until Saturday afternoon. Immigration lawyers said that, late Friday, they noticed Venezuelans who otherwise couldn’t be deported under immigration law being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began to file lawsuits to halt the transfers.

“Basically any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance at defense,” Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group, warned on X.

The litigation that led to the hold on deportations was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who lawyers said were concerned they’d be falsely accused of being members of the gang. Once the act is invoked, they warned, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.

Boasberg barred those Venezuelans’ deportations Saturday morning when the suit was filed, but only broadened it to all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act after his afternoon hearing. He noted that the law has never before been used outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs may successfully argue Trump exceeded his legal authority in invoking it.

The bar on deportations stands for up to 14 days and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.

He said he had to act because the immigrants whose deportations may actually violate the U.S. Constitution deserved a chance to have their pleas heard in court.

“Once they’re out of the country,” Boasberg said, “there’s little I could do.”

–Reporting by Nicholas Riccardi and Regina Garcia Cano, Associated Press.