This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

While the Trump administration fortifies the southern border, concern is growing over the number of foreigners entering the US illegally across the porous northern border with Canada.

People crossing the border between Vermont and Quebec have paid smugglers up to $4,000, usually payable when the immigrants reach their US destination, according to officials and court documents.

While the number of arrests is tiny compared with the southern border, the human smuggling is just as sophisticated.

“They are very well organized. They have scouted the area. They have scouted us,” said US border patrol agent Richard Ross. “Basically, we are not dealing with the JV team; this is the varsity.”

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Driving the increase here, officials say, is the ease of entry into Canada, where visas are no longer required for Mexicans, and a border that receives less scrutiny and resources than the southern border, where thousands fleeing violence in Central America are being detained.

Much of the illegal border crossing activity in Vermont appears to be focused on a 30-mile (50km) segment of the Vermont-Quebec border where Interstate 91 reaches the Canadian border at Derby Line, about 50 miles south-east of Montreal.

Guarding the border here is tricky because Derby Line and the neighboring Quebec town of Stanstead comprise one community where homes and buildings happen to be bisected by an international border.

The community library was purposely built straddling the border to serve people in both communities.

Gun-smuggling case puts spotlight on library straddling US-Canada border Read more

“This is really a town with an invisible border going through it,” said Stanstead resident Matthew Farfan, who has written a book about life along the border.

Against this bucolic backdrop, however, there is a growing sense of unease among US law enforcement authorities.

“The number of illegal alien apprehensions at the Vermont-Canada border has skyrocketed,” said Christina Nolan, Vermont’s US attorney.

So far this fiscal year, there have been at least 267 apprehensions along Vermont’s border with Canada, compared with 132 all of last year, according to statistics compiled by Nolan’s office.

In the border patrol sector that covers 300 miles of border with New York, Vermont and New Hampshire, agents have apprehended 324 people who crossed illegally from Canada so far this fiscal year, compared with 165 in all of 2017. Last month, agents apprehended 85 people across the three states, compared with 17 in June 2017 and 19 in June 2016, statistics show.

The statistics show no corresponding spike in illegal immigration or apprehensions elsewhere along the northern frontier. Border patrol agents speculate it is because the area that includes Vermont is the first stretch of land border east of the Great Lakes and is a short drive from the population centers of Canada and the US east coast.

As part of a broader recent immigration crackdown, US Customs and Border Protection has set up highway checkpoints in Maine, New Hampshire and upstate New York.

Visa-less entry into Canada for countries such as Mexico and Romania plays a role by making the northern border more attractive for people seeking to enter the US illegally, Nolan said.

But Canada views the recent visa changes for Mexico and Romania as having a minimal impact on the border, said Beatrice Fenelon, a spokeswoman for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

The flow of illegal border crossers goes in both directions. Since around the time Donald Trump took office, thousands of immigrants in the US have fled north to Canada seeking asylum.

Last October in the largest single case in memory of border patrol agents in the Derby Line area, 16 people were apprehended at a hotel after 14 had entered the US west of Derby Line. The other two were the smugglers.

The Mounties are aware of the cases and ready to help their US counterparts, said a spokeswoman, Sgt Camille Habel. But they do not appear to view the problem with the same urgency as US officials: “It’s not a trend yet,” Habel said.