House GOP Warns of Problems at Border, Just Not the One You Expect; Lawmakers Push Biden Admin to Pay More Attention to Northern Border Threats; Massive Surge in Migrants in North Dakota Raises Alarms: ‘Worst’ Is Coming

House GOP warns of problems at border, just not the one you expect:

To deal with a reported record number of border crossings, House Republicans recently held a subcommittee hearing — in North Dakota.

That may seem odd, with the federal government and many southern border states locked in a struggle over what to do about migrants illegally crossing into the United States from Mexico. President Joe Biden recently announced plans to curtail asylum migration in response to criticism.

But while the U.S.-Mexico border has received the lion’s share of press coverage, some strange goings-on are afoot along the 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border as well.

Along certain sections of the border, illegal crossings are reaching unprecedented numbers. In the border region that abuts upstate New York and parts of New England, for instance, agents characterized recent activity as a “flood” of illegal crossers.

In fiscal 2023, Border Patrol agents in that sector nabbed about 7,000 illegal crossers, which was easily more than had been rounded up there in the last 10 years combined. In Boston station WBZ TV’s tour of that section of the border, reporters saw part of that flood when they witnessed Border Patrol agents “arrest a Lithuanian national who tried to cross through the woods abutting a pond that straddles the border between Vermont and Canada.”

The nationalities of those crossers are all over the map, with a very large number at the northern border being from Mexico. One logical explanation for that is that the U.S. is between Canada and Mexico. Mexican citizens who find themselves in Canada either have to travel through the U.S. to get home or skirt the U.S. by boat. Republicans reckon that Mexican drug cartels are one big reason for this influx in illegal northern border traffic.

“You can’t be further away from the Canadian border than Grand Forks,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) said at the May 29 field hearing in that North Dakota city of nearly 59,000 people.

“We’re 70 miles from the Canadian border, but in every single community across the state of North Dakota, somebody is dying from fentanyl poisoning,” said Armstrong, the state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee this fall, and with the Peace Garden State’s strong GOP edge, almost certainly its next chief executive.

Armstrong, first elected to North Dakota’s lone House seat in 2018, added that “100% of those fentanyl pills are made by the cartels in Mexico.”

The federal government doesn’t agree with that percentage or the country of origin for some of the fentanyl production that its agents are fighting. Last year, for instance, “On April 11, 2023, the trial of Marie Um commenced, in Fargo, North Dakota,” the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a news release celebrating victory in that trial.

Um, 42, extradited from Montreal, Quebec, “was part of an organization that was receiving fentanyl and fentanyl analogs from China and importing them into the United States,” according to the DOJ. She was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison. Her case was part of “Operation Denial,” which has led to at least 31 defendants being charged in North Dakota and three in Oregon. —>READ MORE HERE

Lawmakers push Biden admin to pay more attention to northern border threats:

House Republicans are moving to bolster security along the northern border as the U.S.-Canada line becomes more of a concern for illegal immigration hawks.

Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., is leading a new bill that would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct a yearly threat assessment of the northern border.

It would also direct DHS to update its northern border enforcement strategy within 90 days of the threat assessment’s release.

The Biden administration has been grappling with a crisis at the southern border for much of the president’s term.

Recent months have seen the U.S.-Canada border become a growing problem as well, though it is equipped with far fewer resources to deal with it.

There were 2,019 Customs and Border Patrol agents patrolling the northern border in fiscal year 2020 compared to 16,878 at the southern border. The northern border also saw over 150,000 fewer encounters than the southern border at the time, but the figure has more than quadrupled since then.

The first seven months of fiscal year 2024 saw 9,460 people apprehended at the northern border, nearly twice the 4,849 people apprehended for all the previous fiscal year, according to figures provided by Langworthy’s office.

Langworthy’s bill currently has 13 co-sponsors, including fellow Republicans from northern border states. —>READ MORE HERE

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+++++Massive Surge in Migrants in North Dakota Raises Alarms: ‘Worst’ Is Coming+++++

Increase in unlawful northern border crossings alarms residents

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