Northern Border Sees Overwhelming Surge Of Illegal Immigrants

Flood of illegal immigrants at U.S.-Canada border puts strain on law enforcement already overwhelmed down south

Illegal border crossings from Canada into the United States have spiked by the thousands this fiscal year, according to internal Department of Homeland Security memos obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

From October 2022 to this month, the U.S.-Canadian border has seen a flood of illegal aliens, putting strain on law enforcement resources already overwhelmed down south. The memos obtained by the Free Beacon detail that law enforcement has apprehended more than 3,200 illegal immigrants who entered the United States from Canada outside of ports of entry in the 2023 fiscal year, which began in October—more than any previous year on record.

Customs and Border Protection recorded 2,238 migrant encounters on the U.S.-Canadian border in all of fiscal year 2022 and 916 the previous year. Every month of the 2023 fiscal year has been record-breaking for northern illegal border entries and there is no sign of the pace slowing any time soon.

The White House earlier this month directed two dozen CBP staff, some of whom were stationed at the southern border, to stations near the Canadian border. The move was described by the agency as a response to migrants traveling first to Canada from Mexico in order to more easily illegally cross into the United States.

"The situation at the southern border has spilled across all borders," a senior DHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said. "Law enforcement is already dealing with increased traffic at sea and the northern border has been slowly percolating as an area for drug traffickers and criminal groups to exploit. Prioritizing processing over enforcement has led to DHS diverting resources at our northern border to handle historic numbers in the south, and bad actors are only too happy to take advantage of us with our pants down."

Both the DHS memos and publicly available data show the most vulnerable section of the northern border is the Swanton Sector, which includes all of Vermont and counties in New York and New Hampshire that border Canada. DHS estimates that the Swanton Sector has seen a more than 2,000 percent increase in illegal border crossings since the beginning of the fiscal year. More than 60 percent of all illegal border crossings from Canada have been detected in that sector.

As the northern border becomes more chaotic, Border Patrol has been left scrambling. Only roughly 2,000 Border Patrol agents are stationed by the Canadian border. At any time, a Border Patrol agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, just 450 agents are ever on duty. Border Patrol stationed on the northern border, the agent said, do not have the resources, such as drones or fencing, like agents in Texas and Arizona.

House Republicans held a hearing Tuesday morning about security on the northern border, which featured immigration experts and the Border Patrol union president. Both Republicans and witnesses alleged that cartels and other smugglers are taking advantage of a lack of attention towards the Canada-U.S. border as immigration authorities grapple with the unprecedented flood of illegal aliens coming from...

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