President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency this year for the northern border for human smuggling and drug trafficking. While the nearly 4,000-mile-long border with Canada gets less attention than the high-volume southern border, the boundary presents its own set of challenges. The Washington Examiner visited the northern border to evaluate how security has changed under the new administration for the series Threats from Up North: Patrolling the U.S.-Canada Border. Part 1 is on how the southern border affects northern apprehensions.

CHAMPLAIN, New York — More than 80% of illegal immigrants arrested recently along the Canadian border entered the United States from Mexico and were later nabbed by Border Patrol agents stationed at the northern boundary.

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Four in five illegal immigrants whom federal law enforcement agents have apprehended near the Canadian border since Feb. 1 did not enter the U.S. from Canada. They came through the southern border and resettled in the north, according to the U.S. Border Patrol’s third in command, Scott Good.

U.S. Border Patrol officials who work between land border crossings explained in great detail during a ride-along in upstate New York in mid-May with the Washington Examiner how people also try to sneak into the U.S. and how agents work to stay a step ahead of crime rings that smuggle people over the international boundary.

Border Patrol agents told the Washington Examiner that as illegal border crossings have dropped, they have pivoted to focus on arresting those already in the U.S., so long as they are within agents’ jurisdiction, which extends 100 miles south of the Canadian border. The move has helped carry out the Trump administration’s deportation operation.

In the first four months of fiscal 2025, which ran from October 2024 through January 2025, Border Patrol was overwhelmingly arresting illegal immigrants who had crossed the northern border.

But with President Donald Trump imposing immigration restrictions and declaring a national emergency after his Jan. 20 inauguration, illegal immigration attempts have ticked down at both the northern and southern borders, which led Border Patrol agents up north to focus increasingly on arrests within northern border communities.

Illegal immigrants arrested by Border Patrol agents near the northern border include many who came into the country during the Biden-era border crisis, according to Good.

“There’s a lot of bad people that came across in the previous administration, right? And we were just catching and releasing. If they didn’t have a criminal record in the United States, they were just released, right? But they had criminal records other places,” said Good, chief of Border Patrol’s Law Enforcement Operations Directorate in Washington.

At last count, the Biden administration released more than 5 million illegal immigrants into the U.S.

“They had bad intent to be here in the United States, and their intentions reach all the way to the northern part of the United States, right? Whether it’s trying to smuggle folks from Canada to the United States, or they’re just in those areas to further their drug trade or countless other crimes, they try to take advantage of Americans,” he said.

Other law enforcement agencies may encounter illegal immigrants during traffic stops or criminal arrests, which is when Border Patrol gets called in.

Now that traffic across the border has slowed under Trump, Border Patrol agents are available to respond to community and law enforcement requests for help when they encounter illegal immigrants.

“The U.S. Border Patrol engages in proactive public awareness campaigns and relationship building within local communities. Public response and partnerships with other law enforcement agencies is vital and continues to produce valuable information for agents,” Scott said. “Using the information, U.S. Border Patrol agents conduct targeted enforcement operations specifically to take into custody certain individuals.”

Partnerships and cross-sharing of information with Canadian law enforcement are critical when uncovering how non-Canadian illegal immigrants in the U.S. were able to get into Canada before later trespassing into the U.S.

Of illegal immigrants arrested at large in the U.S. thus far this year, 27% entered Canada on a student visa. Another 26% had some level of asylum status in Canada before coming into the U.S.

Illegal border crossings

The 5,500-mile northern border is nearly three times longer than the 1,950-mile Mexico border and is the longest land border in the world.

Border Patrol is responsible for guarding the border from Washington state along the Pacific coast to Maine’s Atlantic coast, and none of it has a wall.

One particular spot on the Canadian border has seen more people arrested than all other areas. Roughly 75% of arrests since 2023 have occurred in Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector, which stretches from northeastern upstate New York through Vermont and New Hampshire, according to Raymond Bresnahan, the chief patrol agent in charge of Swanton Sector’s Champlain Station in Champlain, New York.

How smugglers move people

The Swanton Sector is located just over the border from Montreal and Toronto, making it a prime destination for immigrants who fly into Canada and then travel a short distance down to the border.

Immigrants who cross up north use criminal networks to get them over the border, as well as people who can guide them.

“There’s also a lot of advertising. Our intel department has found different TikTok advertisements where the smugglers are right on there, saying, ‘Come with me. I’ll get you through,'” Bresnahan said. “There’s a lot of money to be made in that. And once people figure that out, you get a lot of people wanting to partake.”

CBP’s Air and Marine Operations Director David Fulcher oversees the National Air Security Operations Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Fulcher told the Washington Examiner that smugglers typically drop people off on one side and have someone else pick them up south of the border.

“It’s a coordinated effort,” Fulcher said. 

Immigrants pay $3,000 to $5,000 each to smugglers who can get them over the border, not including travel from the person’s country of origin, Bresnahan said.

“We see them trying to use Uber drivers. Sometimes they’re unsuspecting Uber drivers. Sometimes they’re in on it, but they’re good at always looking for a new way to beat us,” Bresnahan said.

Most illegal immigrants choose to cross during the warmer months and further east near more populated areas because walking even short distances in the sub-zero temperatures is so dangerous.

Agents use snowmobiles to get through multiple feet of snow when there is snow on the ground, which can stretch from mid-fall into mid-spring.

Neal Cartin is a paramedic for the Clinton Ambulance Squad located roughly 20 miles south of the border town of Champlain. His team was getting called out to rescue immigrants who had called 911 and gotten lost on the border, particularly in dangerous weather conditions during the colder months.

“We were getting in January, February, 10 calls. March, April started slowing down. Of course, the snow starts to melt, and we’re not seeing them. They’re being intercepted somewhere else, or they’re actually filtering into the communities,” Cartin said. “We’re utilizing resources, not just in manpower, but in supplies. Did it impact the fire department? Yes, it did. We were having to use our volunteers in their vehicles.”

Border Patrol’s Champlain Station has a small detention space on site, but it began construction to expand to a larger facility in 2023 that can comfortably fit 50 workspaces for agents and safely house immigrants, a sign that Border Patrol does not see illegal immigration going away any time soon.

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Immigrants are not supposed to be detained by Border Patrol for more than three days before being turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for longer-term detention or to be released from custody.

In the Swanton Sector, immigrants will be driven to an ICE detention facility in Batavia, near Buffalo, New York, where they may be deported following immigration court proceedings.