Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) announced a substantial increase in border security along the New Hampshire-Canadian border on Thursday, focusing on increasing local law enforcement to enhance national safety.
Speaking alongside Attorney General John Formella, the pair revealed how a $1.4 million initiative outlined in the state’s budget will be used to create the Northern Border Alliance Task Force. Over the next year and a half, 10,000 additional law enforcement patrol hours will be added along the state’s 58-mile border.
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Sununu cited data from the United States Customs and Border Protection that shows 430 people on the terrorist watch list tried to cross the northern border last fiscal year, more than those who attempted to come through the southern border. The Republican governor said encounters with individuals on the terrorist watch list have doubled in this area since 2017.
“There’s national security implications to securing the northern border that are becoming more and more obvious every day,” Sununu said during a news conference.
During the news conference, Sununu began by pointing to an increased threat of terrorist attacks, noting they “are at an all-time high” in the wake of Hamas's invasion of Israel on Oct. 7.
Border Patrol runs criminal and national security screenings on those attempting to cross the border. The process includes running names through the Terrorist Screening Data Set, which is an FBI system used to track known or suspected terrorists or terrorist affiliates. Encounters with those who have FBI terror database matches are higher at the U.S. and Canada border, with the majority of them occurring at official ports of entry.
In February, the Swanton Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, which covers 295 miles across New Hampshire, Vermont, and part of New York, reported an approximate 846% increase in encounters and apprehensions from Oct. 1, 2022, to Jan. 31, 2023, compared to the same period in fiscal year 2022.
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The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire condemned the new measures, citing a lack of state-specific state data from Customs and Border Protection. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in May against the CBP to provide state data that justifies the actions taken at the border.
“The Governor’s Office and Department of Safety are still unable to show any New Hampshire-specific, cumulative data on northern border crossings, and yet announced today that instead of investing in actual, documented needs of North Country communities — including housing, broadband, and substance use treatment — they are moving forward with the next phase of their project to expand police power and surveillance within the Granite State under the guise of a ‘crisis’ on our border,” Frank Knaack, ACLU’s policy director said in a statement to the New Hampshire Bulletin.