The Biden-Harris administration has repeatedly touted its success in abating the southern border crisis, but it fails to mention that northern border illegal migrant encounters have surged to levels greater than the last three fiscal years combined.
President Joe Biden signed executive actions in June to stem the flow of illegal migration at the southern border, including by raising asylum standards and lowering the number of migrants who are allowed to seek sanctuary. The Biden administration has declared the actions a success as the number of illegal migrant encounters at the southern border has dipped in recent months — but little attention has been paid to the northern border, which is experiencing an exponential surge in illegal immigration this fiscal year and comes with a host of challenges that make it stand out from its southern counterpart.
“Southern border numbers may be down, but we would expect people’s desire to come here to remain the same,” Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Since the things that apply to the southern border don’t necessarily apply to the northern border, you could certainly see more people there.”
There were 3,037 illegal migrant encounters at the northern border in July, up from 926 in January — a 228% increase, according to Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) data. It’s also a whopping 1033% increase from July 2022, which only saw 268 encounters. There have been a total of 19,498 illegal migrant encounters thus far in fiscal year 2024, more than the last three fiscal years combined.
Further, over 15,000 thousand of the migrants encountered at the northern border are single adults, CBP data shows.
Terrorists or terror-linked individuals continue to try crossing the northern border as well. Approximately 283 migrants on the Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSDS) have been apprehended at the northern border so far in fiscal year 2024, 281 of whom were apprehended at legal points of entry. There were a total of 487 migrants on the TSDS that were apprehended in all of fiscal year 2023, roughly double the number of TSDS encounters at the southern border.
Authorities have arrested individuals from dozens of countries, including Venezuela, India and Bangladesh and Mexico, according to CBS News.
“It was a flood we had never seen before. It was an exponential shift, something we were not expecting and it just hit us hard,” Erik Lavallee, a Border Patrol agent tasked with overseeing the U.S. Border Patrol station in Beecher Falls, Vermont, told CBS in August.
There may be different factors contributing to the illegal immigration rates in the north. Until recently, Canada had a law in place that allowed foreign nationals to fly into the country without a travel visa, where they could then move southbound and claim asylum at the U.S. border. The country changed the law in February and is now requiring visas for incoming Mexicans and other foreign nationals.
Migrants can also find ways over the northern border without being detected, especially given that it does not have the physical barriers and fences that the southern border does, and stretches thousands of miles wider than its southern counterpart.
“Here, we’re not seeing the same prevalence of individuals requesting either asylum or wanting to be caught. The people here that we’re seeing for the most part, they’re trying to find that seam. They’re trying to find that vulnerability and come into the United States without detection,” Lavallee told CBS.
The Border Patrol Union was concerned as early as in mid-2023 that the expiration of the Trump-era migrant expulsion policy — which ended in May last year — would result in a surge of illegal immigration along the northern border, the DCNF previously learned.
Making matters more difficult is that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and CBP do not have the same level of resources at the northern border as they do at the typically more problem-ridden southern border, given that it has not historically been a hotspot for illegal migration, according to Camarota. There are only 1,900 Border Patrol agents positioned at the northern border, compared to 16,000 agents at the southern border, a U.S. official confirmed to the DCNF.
“The number of agents, the cameras and tracking equipment, the whole infrastructure — it’s vastly greater at the southern border than it is at the northern border,” Camarota told the DCNF.
A U.S. official further told the DCNF that the northern border “requires a different mixture of facilities, operations, infrastructure, and technology resources from those appropriate to the southwest and coastal borders, because the operating environment and the nature of illegal activity faced on the northern border are different.”
To deal with the surge of migrants at the northern border, the Biden administration is planning to fast-track the processing of asylum claims by requiring migrants to have their documents immediately ready for screening and reducing the number of hours they would have to consult with lawyers, according to internal documents reviewed by CBS. Doing so, in theory, will allow Border Patrol agents to more quickly discern who is eligible for asylum and who needs to be turned away.
“Individuals who cross irregularly will be subject to removal if they do not have a legal basis to remain and will lose the ability to benefit from lawful pathways,” a CBP spokesperson told the DCNF.
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