It’s well-known that millions of migrants have illegally entered the United States, crossing over the country’s southern border with Mexico. What isn’t as well-known is migrants are also crossing illegally into the US over its northern border with Canada. And while it’s very much shy of the numbers coming in from the south, the number of migrants crossing from the north has increased 50-fold under the Biden-Harris administration, according to the US Border Patrol. “This year, illegal crossings surpassed the number for the last 17 years combined,” reports the New York Post. “Border Patrol agents in the Swanton sector, which includes more than 200 miles of land border between Maine and the St. Lawrence River in New York, apprehended more than 19,000 illegal migrants from 97 different countries in fiscal year 2024, the Border Patrol chief for the sector, Robert Garcia, said this week.” .A number of the illegal crossers are suspected terrorists. “Among them have been at least 321 terror suspects as of the end of August, with the numbers for September still not logged into Customs and Border Protection’s data,’ reports The Post. “In the year prior, there were 484 suspected terrorists apprehended.” The threat of terror suspects coming from Canada is very real, adds The Post, which reports a 20-year-old Pakistani living legally in Canada on a student visa, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, “was allegedly on his way to the US border to carry out a massacre of NYC Jews, that he hoped would be ‘the largest US attack since 9/11.’” According to Border Patrol, Khan planned to smuggle himself into the US, but was caught in September by undercover FBI agents masquerading as co-conspirators. Though the number of crossings from Canada is smaller compared to the southern border, where 54,000 illegal border crossings were recorded in September alone, they have been increasing. Border Patrol, in fiscal year 2021, recorded just 365 illegal crossers were caught in the sector, climbing to more than 1,000 in 2022, and close to 7,000 last fiscal year. “Across the whole northern border, crossings have increased massively in recent years, with nearly 190,000 illegal migrants caught crossing from Canada in fiscal year 2023,” says The Post, more than six times as many illegal crossers as in 2021, with crossings in fiscal year 2024 looking likely to be close to 2023 levels. According to Border Patrol sources who spoke with The Post, the northern border offers fewer barriers for migrants trying to sneak across, with no border wall and limited law enforcement manpower patrolling huge swaths of land. Additionally, adds The Post, a reason the northern border has seen a recent surge while crossings on the southern border are falling is that the 5,500-mile/8851-km stretch is not affected by the new Biden-Harris administration’s asylum restrictions. The rules, which are similar to a Trump administration policy, restrict illegal border crossers from accessing the years-long asylum process The policy remains in effect at the southern border, where it bars asylum access until illegal crossings fall below an average of 1,500 per day for a month. “The executive order doesn’t affect us,” a Border Patrol source at the northern border previously told The Post. “Family units are getting released and singles are sent to detention for adjudication.” Earlier this year, residents in rural Swanton Vermont told The Post about the migrant smuggling taking place on their properties. “Now I’ve got the Border Patrol guys on speed dial,” local Chris Feeley, 52, told the news outlet in February, adding he has seen the illegal crossings firsthand take place over the last three years from the vantage point of his hunting tree stand. “He recalled one morning when he was up in the tree watching startled deer run by before seeing two men ‘of Mexican descent’ wearing backpacks and carrying walking sticks,” says The Post. “One stopped right underneath me and was looking at his iPhone and was following a trail, so obviously somebody gave him a route of which way to go.” “I was just stunned; I didn’t know what to do. I just let them walk off, I gave them 10 minutes before I went back to the barn to call Border Patrol.” Feeley told The Post border agents in the area advised him to start carrying a gun to protect himself.
