Although Canada’s U.S. border has one unlawful crossing for every 10 at the Mexico-U.S. border, our crossings have nearly doubled in the last two years 

2024/12/02 Leave a comment

Some useful data that helps understand USA concerns and provides shared incentives for better managing the border.

…While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not yet committed to a plan for increasing Canadian border security, Quebec’s Premier François Legault has called for one.“I think now’s not the time to play at whether it’s true or not that our borders are not secure. I think it’s important that a plan be tabled,” Premier Legault told reporters.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Trump’s concerns with the U.S.-Canada borders are well founded. Her government may be sending law enforcement to the province’s shared border with Montana to develop a “specialized border patrol.”“Saying we’re not as bad as [Mexico] is not going to fly in this case,” Premier Smith told CTV News.

“Saying we’re not as bad as [Mexico] is not going to fly in this case,” Premier Smith told CTV News.

Border crossings 

In fiscal year 2024 (October 2023 to September 2024), the number of U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) encounters at America’s northern border with Canada was nearly 200,000. Those at the U.S. border with Mexico, meanwhile, were 2.1 million.

There were just over 10 U.S. Border Patrol encounters along the Mexico-U.S. border for every one encounter along the Canada-U.S. border.

Encounters occur when the USBP locates individuals attempting to enter the country, either illegally between border posts or at official crossings without necessary paperwork like visas. It also includes those turned away because of public health rules, such as those put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Between 2022 and 2024, USBP encounters at the U.S.-Canada border nearly doubled, increasing 81 percent. Meanwhile, those at the Mexican border declined by 10 percent.

At both borders, single adults are the vast majority of those attempting to enter the U.S. At the U.S.-Canada border in 2022, single people numbered 92,737 or 84 percent of all USBP encounters. In 2024 they numbered 155,214 or 78 percent.

Families attempting to enter the U.S. unlawfully have increased remarkably.

At the Mexico-U.S. border, between 2022 and 2024, families rose from 23 to 41 percent of USBP encounters. At the Canadian border in 2022, they were just 13 percent of all encounters. This year they rose to 21 percent.

Who’s coming?

What’s also increased is both individuals and families travelling first to Canada, with the ultimate plan of making it across our southern border to the United States.

“When you see that, increasingly, the open border policies of Justin Trudeau [are] leading to people coming to Canada as a staging area to enter into the United States, to such a point that it has caught [the United States’] attention, we need to address those issues,” said Premier Smith this week.

The increase of USBP encounters at the northern U.S. border, compared to those in the U.S. south, gives some weight to this idea that migrants are increasingly using Canada’s less defended border as a first step to illegally enter the U.S.

As U.S.-Mexico border security has become tighter, human smugglers have increasingly advised clients to travel to the U.S. through the U.S.-Canada border, according to CBC reporting. Taxis services to drive migrants to New York City have reportedly boomed in New York State border towns.

In 2023, Indians were the single largest national group for attempts to cross the Canada-U.S. border, numbering 30,000.

From 2022 to 2023, USBC encounters with Venezuelans along our border increased the most relatively, from 201 to 1,375; followed by Peruvians from 148 to 662; and Mexicans from 3,221 to 11,121. Each relative increase was remarkably higher compared to those at the Mexico-U.S. border.

Other Central and South American nationals like Nicaraguans, Colombians, and Brazilians–whose countries are said to be facing a migration crisis–top the list for 2022 to 2023’s increased USBP encounters at the Canada-U.S. border. In 2023, encounters with Mexican, Nicaraguan, and Brazilian nationals at the Mexico-U.S. border actually declined, as those at Canada’s border rose remarkably.

Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said Canada’s U.S. border presently represents an “extreme national security” vulnerability for his country….

Source: Although Canada’s U.S. border has one unlawful crossing for every 10 at the Mexico-U.S. border, our crossings have nearly doubled in the last two years

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The undefended Canada-U.S. border gets renewed scrutiny as Trump’s win revives historic anxieties

2024/12/02 Leave a comment

Good long read and overview. Excerpt some of the most interesting comments:

…In the rush to find ways of taming Mr. Trump’s sudden fury about the Canadian border, experts are now calling for the revival of obscure and long-dormant bilateral bodies. Former public safety minister Marco Mendicino said one way to “send a very strong signal to the president-elect” is to immediately reconvene a meeting of the Canada-U.S. Cross-Border Crime Forum, which was revived after several years in abeyance last year.

The forum, composed of Canada’s public safety and justice ministers, and the U.S. secretary of homeland security and attorney-general, is a ready-made platform for sharing intelligence and addressing concerns about human and drug smuggling across the border.

“Being pro-active is crucial, because we want to transmit that we are in total alignment when it comes to shoring up the integrity of the border,” Mr. Mendicino said.

If Canadians often thought of their border with the U.S. as a kind of decorative ticker tape, the Trump administration appears to believe the border is more like a fishing net that is full of holes. And some of the numbers do suggest that our shared border is becoming more porous to migrants and drugs, as Mr. Trump alleged in his social media post.

Statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that roughly twice as many suspected terrorists have tried to cross from Canada into the U.S. as have from Mexico in recent years.

The data are deeply concerning for Americans in the post-9/11 era and should be taken seriously and investigated by Canadian officials, said Michael Barutciski, a York University professor of international affairs.

As recently as September, he pointed out, a Pakistani man living in the Toronto area was arrested near the border in Ormstown, Que., in September on allegations he was plotting an Islamic State-inspired mass shooting on a Jewish centre in New York. The man entered Canada on a student visa last year.

“It doesn’t look good,” said Prof. Barutciski. “It’s a very sensitive issue and they often turn to Canada as sort of a weak point and they’re paranoid about that and we can’t deny that once in a while we do give them reasons to be afraid.”

Former Conservative public safety minister Peter Van Loan thinks the fear of Canadian terror strikes in the U.S. is overblown and that the perception is worth combatting while the issue is front and centre. After all, the data on terrorists reflect those who tried to enter the country and were prevented from doing so.

“It has been a long running misunderstanding among Americans that Canada has been a source of terrorists,” he said. “None of the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada. I continually ran into American politicians who believe they did come in through Canada, and the fact is, they did not. So Canada has a bit of a public relations issue there.”

The border is certainly under growing strain from irregular migrants – although the perception that they are more likely to be criminals has been harshly scrutinized. A recent U.S. study found that undocumented immigrants in Texas, at least, had lower rates of violent crime than U.S.-born citizens….

Source: The undefended Canada-U.S. border gets renewed scrutiny as Trump’s win revives historic anxieties

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Border crossings from Canada into New York, Vermont and N.H. are up tenfold. Local cops want help.

2023/03/20 Leave a comment

More on the southern flow at the border:

On the snowy border between New York and Canada, the local sheriff’s office is calling for the U.S. Border Patrol to put more manpower behind what the locals call a growing crisis: The number of illegal border crossings in the area over the last five months is nearly 10 times what it was over the same time last year, and the border crossers are in danger of freezing to death.

From Oct. 1 to Feb. 28, about 2,000 migrants crossed the border between Canada and New Hampshire, Vermont and New York south through the forests, compared to just 200 crossings in the same period the previous year.

The migrants are mainly from Mexico, and they can travel to Canada without visas before they cross illegally into the U.S., often to reunite with their families.

Last weekend, Clinton County, New York, Sheriff David Favro’s team assisted Border Patrol in rescuing 39 migrants, some whose clothes had frozen to their bodies.

“We are seeing more and more people, and it can be a deadly terrain if you’re not familiar with it,” Favro said.

He said responding to rescues like that has taxed the resources of his department, already stretched thin to cover the residents of his rural county, population 80,000, which shares about 30 miles of border with the Canadian province of Quebec.

“The only way to really be able to cover and protect [the northern border] is boots on the ground,” Favro said.

Just last week, Customs and Border Protection added 25 agents to the area, the Swanton Sector, to deter migration. But Favro and other locals who spoke to NBC News in Mooers, New York, said that’s not enough.

Mooers Fire Chief Todd Gumlaw said he recently helped rescue two Mexican women stuck in an icy swamp in the middle of the night. Gumlaw, along with Border Patrol, local police and EMS workers, was able to render first aid and get the women to a hospital to be treated for frostbite and mild hypothermia after they lost their shoes in the swamp, he said. “Preservation of human life is first and foremost with my department. We put [immigration status] to the back of our mind,” Gumlaw said.

The Mooers/Champlain region is a clump of small blue-collar residences and farms, where, according to locals, “everyone knows everyone” and properties can be several blocks apart, adding a sense of unease among some of the locals witnessing the mass migration in the region.

According to local first responders, southbound migrants often seek shelter in empty sheds and barns to shield themselves from the cold.

April Barcomb, a Mooers resident, said she has had migrants show up at her doorstep and is now saving up for security cameras.

“It’s not something I would usually do,” she said. “But it makes me think twice. And with the kids and the family, I gotta install cameras.”

While most locals who spoke to NBC News said they understood that most migrants crossing the region aren’t threats, neighbors are keeping their eyes open for unusual activity.

“People are scared,” a Champlain County resident said. “It’s the fear of the unknown. They’re [neighbors] worried about their safety, because they don’t know these people.”

Most of the migrants are Mexicans, who are frequently blocked from crossing the southern U.S. border and believe they will have an easier time if they fly to Canada and then cross into the U.S. from the north.

According to a CBP spokesperson, the Swanton Sector has been the site of more than 67% of all migrant crossings at the northern border across all eight sectors through February.

Unlike the southern border, where over 16,000 Border Patrol agents are responsible for staffing roughly 2,000 miles, about 2,000 border agents patrol the 5,000-mile border between the U.S. and Canada, which includes Alaska’s land boundaries, making it the longest international land border in the world.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a letter Tuesday to step up enforcement along his state’s 51-mile border with Canada or allow his police forces more authority to do so.

“Over the last few months, the State of New Hampshire has attempted to assist the federal government in securing our northern border. These offers of assistance have been repeatedly rejected. The Biden administration has cut funding and hindered the state’s ability to assist in patrolling the northern border,” Sununu said.

A spokesperson for CBP said the additional agents who were just sent to the Swanton Sector will help deter migration.

Source: Border crossings from Canada into New York, Vermont and N.H. are up tenfold. Local cops want help.

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USA: Criminal Illegal Immigration Rates Fall Along the Border

2021/10/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just announced that they have encountered 1,431,179 people out of 1,960,519 total enforcement actions in FY2021 along the borders of the United States. When it comes to immigration enforcement, the two components of CBP are the Office of Field Operations and the Border Patrol. Relative to the 478,648 individuals encountered by CBP in FY2020, the number of individuals encountered is up by a factor of three in FY2021. Although the number of individuals encounters by CBP rose enormously in FY2021, the rate of criminals among them dropped to new lows.

CBP defines criminal noncitizens (they used to be called criminal aliens) as individuals who are not U.S. citizens and who have been convicted of crimes here or abroad if the conviction is for conduct which is also a crime in the United States. The CBP data also include noncitizens and U.S. citizens who are arrested as a result of being wanted by other law enforcement agencies. So as to not exclude any criminal illegal immigrants through unintentional omission, this blog post counts all apprehensions of criminals by CBP as noncitizen illegal immigrants. This results in an overcount of illegal immigrant criminals, but it’s better to make errors that overcount illegal immigrant criminality rather than errors that undercount it. In 2016, about 6.4 percent of all illegal immigrant individuals encountered by CBP were criminals. In FY2021, only about 1.9 percent of illegal immigrants apprehended by CBP were criminals (Figure 1).

The absolute number of criminal illegal immigrants encountered by CBP also fell from FY2016 to FY2021, but not in every year. In FY2016, CBP encountered 38,758 criminals out of approximately 607,761 individuals encountered. In FY 2021, CBP encountered 28,213 criminals out of 1,431,179 total illegal immigrants encountered. During that time, the number of illegal immigrants encountered by CBP increased by 236 percent and the number of criminals encountered fell by over 27 percent. In some of the intervening years, the absolute number of criminal illegal immigrants rose, but it generally trended downward.

It’s remarkable that such a vast increase in the number of illegal immigrants apprehended in FY2021 included a lower percentage of criminals than earlier years. Perhaps the supply of criminal illegal immigrants seeking to enter the United States is relatively inelastic and massive changes in the number of individuals seeking to enter unlawfully or ask for asylum are non‐​criminals. In other words, reforms in U.S. immigrant policy that could attract more illegal immigrants or changes in foreign conditions that prompt mass migration do not seem to much affect the flow of criminals.

Many Americans want to keep the border closed, increase harsh border security methods, or restrict asylum because they fear that those encountered are criminals. Based on data supplied by CBP, the criminal illegal immigrant proportion of all encounters along the border are lower in FY2021 than in previous years despite the large increase in the number of encounters. Illegal immigration is a serious problem that imposes high costs on Americans and migrants, but it does not pose a serious criminal threat.

Source: Criminal Illegal Immigration Rates Fall Along the Border

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