After dramatic post-election drop, border crossings level off

New York Post

5 days ago

Illegal crossings at the Canadian border have stabilized over the past three months, new data show.
Border crossings were up slightly in April, with 4,835 people caught trying to sneak into the US compared to 4,477 in March according to US Customs and Border Protection data.
The current figures are a fraction of the illegal entries from the often-overlooked northern border during the Biden administration, when 15,207 people were caught crossing illegally in October and, in August, at the peak — 18,944.
4 A mother and son from Turkey walk through a creek as they try to cross the border between Quebec and New York State.
Getty Images
Of the 4,835 nabbed at the border in April, 1,580 were Canadian citizens, followed by 609 Indian nationals, 380 Chinese and 365 Mexicans, data show.
Christian Leuprecht, a Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University, said the numbers are the result of years of policies — such as Canada loosening visa requirements for Indian students, leading to droves coming with no intention to study, but to make an escape south.
'There'll always be people trying to get into the US,' Leuprecht told The Post.
'And the more the US tries to clamp down on the southern border, inherently there'll be people with resources — because it takes more resources to get to Canada — that will try to go there to make it into the US.'
4 Leuprecht expects the numbers to keep dropping in the future.
Queen’s University
Crossings typically plateau in cooler weather months because fewer migrants attempt the treacherous, sometimes fatal journey on foot, and pick up in warmer weather.
But Leuprecht expects the number of illegal crossings to decline further, as the US and Canada ramp up a number of joint measures announced to go after transnational organized crime organizations smuggling migrants, rather than just the migrants themselves.
4 The northern border is the largest land border in the world, spanning more than 5,500 miles of wilderness
REUTERS
4 The Canada-US border is largely unguarded territory outside of official border-crossing points.
AP
Border Patrol Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham told The Post that the Trump administration's dedication to the crisis is seeing results.
'For the first time in years, we've been able to redeploy agents from processing centers back to the field, patrolling the land and catching illegal aliens we simply couldn't get to before,' he said. 'Bottom line: under President Trump's leadership, illegal crossings have dropped dramatically at both the northern and southern borders.'