Drug smuggling has increased by nearly 600 percent over the last two years. Border encounters have skyrocketed 1,500 percent under President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, U.S. Border Patrol agent staffing is down.
These numbers are not from America’s southern border. They are from our northern border.
The border between the United States and Canada is the longest international border in the entire world – a massive 5,525 miles from Alaska to Maine. Yet, it remains largely unsecured and overexposed. We represent two of those states – Pennsylvania and Montana – each with unique stories and experiences of how the Biden administration’s failed immigration policies have turned every state into a border state.
That is why we recently launched the Northern Border Security Caucus, a coalition of 28 members of Congress who share our vision of securing all of America’s borders and ensuring that the 13 border states and five Great Lakes in the north are receiving the attention and resources they deserve.
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By calling attention to the northern border, we do not want to minimize the record illegal immigration, drug smuggling and crime that have ravaged communities along the U.S.-Mexico border. Instead, we are amplifying that message. More must be done to secure all of our borders; to protect our communities from deadly drugs; and to give leaders from northern states a greater voice in solving our nation’s troubled immigration system.
For those 5,525 miles between the U.S. and Canada, there are just 115 official ports of entry. In a 2019 analysis, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that "while (U.S. Customs & Border Protection) has performance measures… some of which include data from the Northern border, it does not have specific measures to assess its effectiveness at securing the Northern border between ports of entry."
Somehow, there is no real measurement of who is crossing into the United States from the north, what they are bringing, and where they are going.
What we do know is this: migrants and smugglers are seeking alternative routes into the United States and the northern border is increasingly their first stop. In many cases, they are never caught. Like the southern border, that means the numbers of illegal migrants entering the United States is much higher than records show. In other cases, they end tragically. In January 2022, we learned about the deaths of four Indian migrants who died in Canada due to exposure to extreme weather while illegally trying to cross into the United States. In January, two men were charged with human trafficking in their deaths.
For American communities, illegal drug smuggling may be the biggest current threat. Fentanyl trafficking has become a poster child for the porous southern border. The devastating impacts this lethal drug can have on a community are very well-documented. Since fiscal year 2021, the northern border has seen a 26 percent jump in fentanyl apprehension. Ecstasy: a whopping 1,736 percent.
While the southern and northern borders have different circumstances and their own unique challenges, they require similar solutions. Key among them: Border Patrol needs more agents.
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As record levels of border encounters and drug smuggling continue to increase, U.S. Border Patrol staffing on the northern border has remained flat since fiscal year 2009. Yet, officials from northern Border Patrol stations tell us they have assumed additional work to support southern border agents – specifically, digitally processing illegal migrants who have been apprehended at the southern border – because they are overwhelmed with the surge of migrants. In the north, this means agents are inside at a desk, not outside patrolling land or water. We must provide increased funding for more agents and improved technology. This mandate would go a long way toward securing all of our borders.
Although we serve on House committees that address policies other than immigration, like so many in Congress, this issue found us. Whether it was the Biden administration dropping off nearly 150 migrant children under the darkness of night in northwest Pennsylvania without notification; or the stories of deputized posses forced to patrol the Montana mountainside to combat drug traffickers, we were quickly exposed to the realities that open-border policies can impose upon communities thousands of miles away from the southwest United States.
Through the work of our new caucus, and that of House Republicans at large, we plan to show the Biden administration that our broken immigration system isn’t simply a talking point: it’s a critical issue that affects our entire country.
Members of Congress from both the north and the south have practical solutions to the joint border crises at hand. We plan to give a greater voice to the American people who, until now, have been left out of the conversation.
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Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke represents Montana’s 1st Congressional District and serves on the House Appropriations Committee. He previously served as secretary of the Interior under former President Donald Trump.
