US border with Canada faces crisis amid uptick in migrant encounters

As Election Day approaches, border control has become a key topic among the presidential candidates. While much of the discussion focuses on the southern border, the northern border — the international border between Canada and the United States — often receives less attention.

The northern border is more than 5,000 miles long, double the length of the southern border, and is experiencing a record surge in migrant encounters. Data collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection show agents encountered migrants over 198,000 times in fiscal year 2024, more than seven times the encounters in 2021.

Recently, evidence was collected by Border Patrol agents, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) worked to uncover and stop sophisticated human smuggling rings.

"One of the key aspects of this case was that in order to kind of have some anonymity or distance themselves from the smuggling attempts, they would order Uber services," HSI special agent Robert Hammer said. "They would tell the people to cross the border, you know, go this direction until you hit a road. They would cross in the middle of the night, sometimes in the cold, in the forest."

HSI collaborated closely with U.S. Border Patrol, agents at the Blaine, Washington port of entry, and Canadian partners to dismantle this smuggling operation.

According to a federal complaint, investigators uncovered 17 connected Uber accounts that ordered more than 600 rides, accumulating more than $80,000 in charges.

In the Pacific Northwest, Hammer oversees a section of the border where migrant encounters reached over 2,400 in 2024, the highest since 2000.

"Criminal investigations for here in the northern border and in the Pacific Northwest in general have been booming ever since the post COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted," Hammer said.

Thousands of people are attempting to cross undetected from Canada into Washington. HSI reports that many of them are from India and are paying between $5,000 and $20,000 to be smuggled in.

According to Homeland Security, they have accounts dedicated to advertising their smuggling services back in India to facilitate illegal entry. This is being marketed on various social media platforms.

Hammer said that the people operating those accounts were responsible for more than 800 individuals coming in and accepting over $500,000 in smuggling fees.

Chief Patrol Agent Rosario Vasquez and his crew oversee the Blaine sector, which encompasses Alaska, Oregon, and western Washington State. The lush green fields of Washington State are where smugglers often come to bypass U.S. border rules.

"We put in a different barrier, to prevent vehicles from driving into the neighborhood because they were driving across homes that are in the U.S., driving through their backyards and through their front yards to make an entry," Vasquez said.

Since the borders reopened after the pandemic, traffic in the Blaine sector has increased, according to Vasquez. From 2022 until now, the region has an increase of about 500% in encounters.

Drug smuggling and human trafficking are occurring not only at the physical border, but also at the Blaine port of entry between the United States and Canada.

Although uncommon, CBP has also seen a rise in the number of encounters of individuals with records on the Terrorist Screening Dataset at the Northern Border, commonly referred to as the terrorist watchlist. According to data on the CBP website, officers encountered 564 people on the watch list in fiscal year 2023 at land ports of entry, up from 157 in 2021. That number dipped to 410 in 2024, but still represented more than six times the number of watch listed individuals encountered at legal land ports of entry at the southern border the same year.

Those on the list may include known or suspected terrorists, affiliates of others on the watch list, and people who may post a threat to the U.S. Despite representing less than 1 percent of all nationwide encounters, apprehending and screening people on the watch list is a crucial component to CBP’s mission to secure the country’s borders.

"Threat is everywhere. There are people that we do not want in our country," Harmit Gill, CBP’s Blaine area port director, told ABC News' Mireya Villarreal. "On any given day, there are folks that we don't let in. They are known as either associates or connection to terror groups."

With less than two weeks to go until the presidential election, immigration and border security has become an increasingly contentious talking point on both sides of the aisle. While some Republicans, including Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump blame the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies for the surge in migration, migrant encounters along the southern border have dropped approximately 55% since the implementation of new asylum restrictions in June.

Earlier this year, Republicans torpedoed a bipartisan border bill, at the direction of former president Trump who has made immigration the focal point of his campaign, that would have added billions of dollars toward border security, added personnel, and asylum officers.

"We're doing the best that we can with the given resources. I need money, I need facilities. We're ten years behind. Technology is moving a fast pace. Our infrastructure, the backbone isn't there yet,” Gill said. “I think in the end of the day, no matter what the political tensions are, protecting our borders and protecting our nation is a priority.”