Tamba Gbamanja, 31, is charged with two counts under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
The offences are alleged to have occurred on April 15, 2017.
On the first day of his trial, Ontario Court Justice John Condon was told the Crown and defence agreed the accused had rented a silver Chevrolet SUV from an Enterprise car rental location in North York two days prior to the incident.
The judge heard testimony from three Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers, who dealt with Gbamanja when he arrived at the border that night.
Justin Barnes, at the time a primary inspection officer, said the accused arrived at the crossing about 9:20 p.m.
Two men and two women were in the vehicle, and when he scanned their passports in the computer system, there were flags on two of them, one of which was a "lookout" for human smuggling.
Gbamanja was behind the wheel of the vehicle, the 10-year officer testified.
Barnes referred them to secondary inspection, after Gbamanja, who answered all his questions, said they lived in Toronto and had been in the US, just looking around for a few hours.
One of the individuals didn't appear to look like the person in the photograph on his passport, he told federal prosecutor Narissa Somji.
Referral to secondary inspection was mandatory because of the flags on the two passports.
Cara Marie Celetti, who was working in immigration that night, then spoke to the four individuals to verify their identifications.
All had Canadian passports, and the driver also had a valid Ontario driver's license, she said.
"Three of the four (photos on the passports) did not resemble three people standing in front of me."
Gbamanja told her they all worked together, and were going to be selling energy to Sault residents, the 19-year CBSA officer testified.
He indicated that his three passengers had called and asked him for a ride after they had been partying the night before in Michigan Sault bars, Celetti said.
The male passenger "didn't resemble his passport the most" and never provided any further identification.
She "concluded something was up" when he couldn't recall when he had become a Canadian citizen.
Most people know when they came to Canada and became a citizen, Celetti told the court.
The group was detained, and about 6 a.m., Celetti said she and another officer stopped at the cell where Gbamanja was being held, and he told them their correct passports were somewhere in the vehicle.
Three Nigerian passports, and valid visas that permitted the trio to be in the U.S. were located in the SUV.
Celetti said they didn't have visas to be in this country and were given one-year exclusion orders.
She and another officer escorted the two women back to the U.S. side of the border about 7 a.m.
During cross-examination by defence lawyer Katie Scott, she said she didn't notice anything wrong with Gbamanja's passport.
The officer agreed the group was detained to get identification and not for human smuggling or for anything that was in the vehicle.
Condon also heard from another CBSA officer who was working in secondary inspection that night.
Aaron Gordon examined the passports, and said he was most concerned about the male passenger whose passport was the subject of the lookout.
When the man was queried about when he became a Canadian citizen, the date he gave didn't match the one in the agency's database, he said.
"When a person becomes a Canadian citizen it's like a birth date or an anniversary. It's not something you forget."
The 12-year officer said his partner searched the vehicle and the individuals' personal effects, and nothing indicated they had been in Canada.
Nigerian bank notes, US dollars, and receipts from the Mackinac Bridge time stamped nine hours apart were found.
"It did not match the story about picking up co-workers who were clubbing in Sault Michigan," Gordon said.
He said he arrested Gbamanja shortly after 2 a.m. for aiding and abetting entrance into Canada.
The court heard he spoke to the accused again at 4:40 a.m.
Gbamanja told him that he was directed by another man to travel to the Days Inn in Sault, Mich. to retrieve some people, but his GPS had taken him to an Ann Arbor Days Inn, Gordon said.
The accused indicated he picked up five people - three of whom had Canadian passports - and drove to the Michigan Sault where he dropped the other two persons at the motel.
Gbamanja stated he was paid $500 and "told me he wouldn't bring people into Canada without Canadian passports," Gordon said.
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