‘Put A Pistol In Your Backpack’: Northern Border Residents On Edge Over Increased Migrant Traffic; Eagle-Eyed Residents Reveal Sophisticated Migrant Smuggling Operation at Northern US Border

‘Put A Pistol In Your Backpack’: Northern Border Residents On Edge Over Increased Migrant Traffic:

Human smuggling cartels have set up sophisticated operations to smuggle migrants into the United States over the open border with Canada, according to a new report by the New York Post.

Amid significant attention and vigilance over migrant crossings into the United States over the international border with Mexico, cartels with smuggling operations have been leading migrants arriving by air in Canada into the United States over stretches of the border that are unmanned and unwalled. The scale of the operations influx has reportedly concerned residents of border communities the Post reported.

“The Border Patrol actually told us, ‘You guys might want to put a pistol in your backpack’ because nine out of 10 of them are just here for a better life, but there’s that one guy that’s got a rap sheet,” said Chris Feeley — a resident of Swanton, Vermont, which is located less than 10 miles away from the international border with Canada — told the Post. “The [U.S. Border Patrol] receptionists know it’s me when I call…They’re like, ‘Oh, hey, Chris, how’s it going?’ and I’m like, ‘Hey, I had some more just walk by my camera if you want to send the boys up there.’”

REPORT: The border crisis along the *northern* border is getting so bad that residents are arming themselves to protect against ongoing smuggling operations.

Time to build a Northern Border wall.

Residents in Swanton, VT are arming themselves with pistols as crossings were up a… pic.twitter.com/sgZBuiVetw

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 19, 2024

The number of foreign nationals who entered the United States illegally over the northern border in 2023 increased by 240% over 2022, totaling 12,200, according to the Post. Of that number, 70% crossed in the Swanton Sector, a 295-mile stretch of border north of the town.

Residents claim that they have spotted alleged foreign nationals of Hispanic and Latino descent walking through the forested areas around Swanton with mobile phones, holding them in a manner to suggest they were following a route to enter the country as pedestrians, the Post reported. Later, they are picked up by vehicles with non-Vermont license plates that ferry migrants into the interior.

“Once you see the New Jersey plates, you know they’re a getaway car. Recently, New Jersey and Massachusetts are the big ones coming to pick up the migrants,” said Kaitlynn Pease — a resident of Alburgh, Vermont, a peninsular town on Lake Champlain internally connected to the United States only via bridge — to the Post. “They’re there early in the morning when there’s no traffic. It’s normally around 6 or 7 in the morning.”

A rendezvous point for migrant encounters has been the Jolly Quick Stop gas station of which Pease is an assistant manager, the Post reported. —>READ MORE HERE

Eagle-eyed residents reveal sophisticated migrant smuggling operation at northern US border:

Unsettling Post footage and interviews with US residents along the Canadian border offer a rare glimpse into the thriving migrant smuggling operation that has taken hold up north in addition to the debacle to the south.

Residents of bucolic Swanton, Vt. — a town of about 6,500 people located just across Lake Champlain from New York and about a 10-minute drive from the Canadian border — have been getting a troubling firsthand look at the US’s northern illegal migrant crisis for months.

The town’s plentiful woods make the leafy hamlet an ideal spot for hunters — and also provide ample camouflage for smugglers, who have become so rampant that some locals are packing pistols to protect themselves and turning into amateur sleuths to help thwart them.

“Now I’ve got the Border Patrol guys on speed dial,” local Chris Feeley, 52, recently grimly acknowledged.

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, the number of migrants illegally entering the US at the northern border last year topped 12,200 — a 240% spike from 2022.

Of those, some 70% of the illegal crossings took place along the 295-mile Swanton Sector, which includes upstate New York, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Illegal crossings at the US’s southern border dwarf those figures, with 2.4 million migrant encounters recorded there in 2023, capping off the year with a record-setting 276,000 encounters in December.

But experts say migrants who make it to Mexico and have the money for a $350 one-way plane ticket from Mexico City or Cancun to Montreal or Toronto in Canada have caught on to the fact that they’re less likely to be caught along the northern US border.

The US-Canadian border is nearly three times as long as the border with Mexico, and ports of entry are often understaffed as CBP directs most of its resources to the migrant surge at the southern border.

Feeley told The Post he has been hunting in the area since he was a teenager, with his favorite vantage point a tree stand about 18 feet above the ground on the property of a local farm.

The elevated perch not only provides a bird’s-eye view of any approaching white-tailed deer but also the area around the Canadian border, which sits just 250 yards from his lookout.

He said that in the past, it was not unusual for him to go an entire day of hunting without encountering another person. But that all changed around three years ago.

Feeley recalled being in his tree stand one morning when a startled group of deer unexpectedly ran by — followed by two men “of Mexican descent” with backpacks and walking sticks, one of whom was looking intently at the screen of his smartphone. —>READ MORE HERE

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