(Headline USA) Border agents are being reassigned from the U.S. southern border to the northern border with Canada as illegal crossings from the north surge, according to reports.
Border Patrol is reportedly begging agents to volunteer along the northern border after hundreds of mostly-Mexican illegal immigrants entered into the country from Canada last month. The agency said illegal crossings across the Canadian border are up a stagger 850%.
Northern states such as Vermont are under immense “strain caused by the surge,” said Robert Garcia, chief patrol agent for Vermont’s Swanton Sector.
“Due to the increased numbers, stations are task saturated with processing large groups, which has contributed” to more migrants being able to slip into the country, Garcia wrote in a memo.
In the first four months of the current fiscal year, which started in October, Vermont’s sector has seen more encounters with illegals than the whole of the previous two years combined, Garcia said. Last month alone, agents in the area recorded 367 apprehensions and encounters.
Southern border officials admitted that illegal immigration from the north is often forgotten because the volume at the U.S.–Mexico border is “astronomical.”
However, that’s very likely why so many migrants are now trying to enter the country via the northern border, said Chris Clem, the former patrol chief for the Yuma sector in Arizona.
“Chief Garcia is a phenomenal agent … If he’s asking for help, we do know that we’ve got a problem up there,” he said.
Sean Walsh, president of the Swanton Sector of the National Border Patrol Council, said Canada’s officials bear as much blame for the growing migrant crisis as does the Biden administration.
“They’re not saying anything,” Walsh said of Canada’s leadership. “They’re allowing it to happen. The visas in place, they are allowed to travel a lot easier. They fly into Montreal, Ontario, and you name it across Canada, and these cartels and smuggling organizations are making money hand over fist.”
