Watching the northern border will be one of my resolutions. The southern border is dangerous, but the northern border has also seen a rise in apprehensions.
On Tuesday, the border patrol in Maine found 20 Romanians illegally crossing the border.
At least two have links to organized crime. From WGME:
Four vehicles were seen illegally crossing the Canadian border into the U.S. near the Houlton sector in Aroostook County.Border Patrol pulled over the vehicles in Hodgdon, and all 20 people were taken to the Fort Fairfield station for processing.While there, all 20 were identified as citizens of Romania, mostly family units, with 10 adults and 10 children.Two were matches for the crime watch list and were sent to “expedited removal.”
The numbers at the southern border cast a shadow over the Houlton Sector, but compare the latest numbers to previous years.
“This incident is indicative of an overall rise in apprehensions witnessed here in Houlton Sector,” announced Acting Chief Patrol Agent in Charge Dennis Harmon in a press statement. “In the last three Octobers, Houlton Sector encountered a total of 33 individuals. In fiscal year 2024 alone, we’ve encountered 53. While this increase poses challenges to Border Patrol resources, it does not dissuade the great work done by our dedicated Agents here in Houlton Sector.”
In June, the Houlton border patrol raised alarms over the rise of human smuggling in the sector due to the attention on the southern border:
In the last two weeks of April, the Houlton Sector border patrol agents disrupted multiple cross-border human smuggling operations, resulting in numerous arrests and vehicle seizures, according to William Maddocks, the U.S. Border Patrol’s Houlton sector chief patrol agent.There were 19 arrests in 14 days in the small Aroostook County towns of Houlton, Mars Hill, Van Buren and Fort Fairfield, according to court records and police accounts. In the past two months there have been 30 illegal border crossing encounters. That’s more than they usually see in a year, according to Border Patrol.
The sector covers the 611-mile border of Maine and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec.
Most of the area contains forests and farms, which means it does not have a large population.
There’s also the visa-free travel to Canada:
“With such a high volume at the southern border, it makes sense some would go to Canada to get into the United States,” said Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C.Mexico’s visa-free travel to Canada also makes it easier to bypass the southern border, which has led to a dramatic increase in northern border crossings from Canada, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.For example, people can fly from Mexico to Montreal, Quebec, for about $350. Other known flight locations are Fredericton, New Brunswick, and Toronto.
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