Border arrests along the Mexican border saw a sharp decrease from 40,000 in May to 34,000 in June. That’s a significant drop. But up north, crossing between the United States and Canada can be as easy as stepping between a few loosely spaced flower pots.
That’s why a new concern is emerging about the porous Canadian border. While the number of arrests there is tiny compared with the southern border, the human smuggling methods are just as advanced. Foreigners pay smugglers up to $4,000 to help them cross from Quebec onto U.S. soil.
“They are very well organized. They have scouted the area. They have scouted us,” says U.S. Border Patrol Agent Richard Ross.
A big factor in the uptick of northern illegal immigration may be the ease with which some immigrants now enter Canada. Visas are no longer required of Mexicans at Canadian checkpoints. It’s feasible for someone to fly from Mexico to Canada and then stroll across the border undetected.
Furthermore, the vast majority of U.S. resources go to controlling the more active Mexican border.
New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire all share a border with Canada. All three are seeing border crossing numbers roughly double or even triple. Last month, agents caught 85 people across the three states. That’s compared with 17 in June 2017 and 19 in June 2016.
This year, federal prosecutors say there have been at least 267 apprehensions along the Vermont-Canada border alone. Compare that to only 132 last year.
But relative to the southern border, these northern border numbers are still quite small. Federal statistics show that in 2017 there were 303,916 people taken into custody at the U.S. border with Mexico. The Canadian border saw only 3,027.
Still, there is a growing concern among U.S. law enforcement patrolling these three border states as they consider the changes needed to close the possible entry gap.
(AP Photo: Canadian patrons of the Haskell Library on the border between Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, cross easily between the two countries. The border is marked by a sign and a row of flower pots.)
