To hear the Detroit media tell it, and the national media re-tell it, the Ambassador Bridge is Michigan’s Bermuda Triangle. One minute, you’re headed for Saturday samples at Costco, the next minute, you are a stranger in a foreign land, detained indefinitely at a black site, never to be seen again.
The first telling of the “wrong turn into Canada” story was a farce. It was a skit on the sitcom “Detroiters.” It was an urban legend—Exit 47B, The Exit That Shall Not Be Taken.
But even as the Freep called the exit “anxiety-inducing” in a 2022 headline, it quickly admitted the truth: “There are no serious consequences for accidentally crossing the border, except that it may cost drivers some time. However, drivers can expect to have their car searched before being turned around.”
The second telling of the wrong-turn story is tragedy. Since the start of 2025, says Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, 231 people have been detained at the Ambassador Bridge, and 90% of them claim they took wrong turns.
But Customs and Border Protection tells the same story now as in 2022: Most people will be fine at the border. Provided they don’t have any issues with customs or immigration.
That’s what’s changed at Exit 47B.
For you or me, a wrong turn to the Ambassador Bridge is a minor inconvenience, easily remedied. It’s illegal immigrants, who have no business here, who have the problem. But what does it say about America that their troubles only begin when trying to enter a second country illegally, Canada?
There’s a reason Tlaib only starts her study at the beginning of 2025: to pin the deportations and detentions to Trump. If World War I was fought to make the world safe for democracy, the war on the border is waged to make America safe for the illegal immigrant.
It shouldn’t be. Every minute spent in America, every dollar of ill-gotten gain, should be “anxiety-inducing.” Instead, this invasion was facilitated at the highest of levels. Of course there will be pain to fix it. Why wouldn’t there be?
But Tlaib should check the calendar. It’s not 2018 anymore. Read the comments on one of those “wrong turn” stories. They’re filled with people cheering on the deportations and urging more of them. What Tlaib intends as fuel for a new round of “Orange Man Bad” is instead viewed as “Promises Made, Promises Kept.”
Americans aren’t being jailed or deported for wrong turns at the Ambassador Bridge. That only happens to people who are here illegally, unable to read signs in English, or to tell Old Glory apart from the Canadian flag.
Their problem is not our problem. Only a radical and suicidal empathy would take you there. The media can play little word games, but we won’t. We voted last year to have deportations, and have them more abundantly.
Gonzalo’s problem has a simple, humane solution: Return home. Now. Today. Of your own free will.
For all that time and money Trump spent building a wall, he could’ve just built a bridge and let the illegals wrong-turn their way out of America.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
