Vermont border sees most illegal crossings from Canada in single month

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A U.S. border patrol sector in Vermont has apprehended a record number of attempted illegal crossings from Canada in a single month.

Officials in the U.S. Border Patrol’s (USBP) Swanton Sector in Vermont saw 1,109 apprehensions in March 2024, the highest recorded by the sector in a single month.

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“The top three nationalities apprehended were 408 Indian, 323 Bangladeshi, and 170 Mexican nationals,” according to the Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia. People from 40 different countries were apprehended in total, he added. National Post has reached out to Swanton Sector’s headquarters for comment.

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The Swanton unit is in charge of a 475-kilometre border shared by the U.S. and Canada, starting immediately east of the Great Lakes. The border is shared with Quebec and Ontario, with about 327 km linked by land and close to 150 km consisting of a water boundary, primarily the St. Lawrence River.

The sector includes close to 62,160 km of territory across the entirety of Vermont, three counties in New Hampshire and four in upstate New York.

According to Gracia, the number of apprehensions made in the Swanton Sector have increased dramatically this year and last.

The number of apprehensions in fiscal year 2023 were higher than the previous 11 years combined, he wrote on X. Since the start of the 2024 fiscal year (Oct. 2023), he added, the number of apprehensions has “doubled” compared to the same period in the previous fiscal year.

USBP defines apprehensions as the “physical control or temporary detainment of a person who is not lawfully in the U.S. which may or may not result in an arrest.” This can include multiple apprehensions of the same person.

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Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman representing New York, put the higher figures in surprising context.

“We’ve seen an 800 per cent increase in the Swanton sector, which is the part of the northern border that I represent, in illegal crossings,” she told Fox News earlier this year.

The crossing in Swanton is especially “perilous” around this time of year due to extended winters, freezing bodies of water and the difficult terrain, which includes lowland swamps, mountain ranges and rural and remote areas.

“Unpredictable storm fronts bring ice and significant snow accumulation throughout the extended winter season,” USBP says on its website. “Swanton Sector Border Patrol continues to encounter family groups with children (aged as young as a few months old) crossing uncertain terrain in single-digit (Fahrenheit) temperatures,” the release adds.

In the 2023 fiscal year, 30,010 Indian nationals were apprehended trying to enter the U.S. from Canada, including at airports, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures cited in the Daily Mail. That is a sharp increase from 17,331 recorded in 2022 the outlet reported.

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This includes 1,630 Indian nationals in the 2023 fiscal year who were apprehended between ports of entry, meaning they were trying to cross without being detected, the Daily Mail reported. In 2023-2024, the total is 2,454, with six months still left in the fiscal year.

Chirag Patel, a Maryland-based immigration lawyer, told Voice of America an increase in illegal crossings might be attributed to the upcoming U.S. election, with people trying to cross ahead of possibly stricter border policies under a potential Donald Trump presidency.

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