How’s Canada’s Border Security Situation as Trump’s Tariff Threat Looms?

Canadian and American flags fly near the Ambassador Bridge at the Canada-U.S. border crossing in Windsor, Ont., on March 21, 2020. The Canadian Press/Rob Gurdebeke

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump sent a jolt through Canada by threatening stiff tariffs if the country doesn’t take action to address illegal migration and drugs flowing south. But how concerning is the situation at the Canadian border, and how does it compare to the Americans’ situation with Mexico?

Trump has been very vocal about immigration issues at the U.S. southern border, calling it an “invasion.” He also blamed Mexico, along with China, for the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl pouring into the United States and devastating communities. Nevertheless, Canada was lumped in with Mexico in Trump’s Nov. 25 tariff threat.

The president-elect said he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all goods coming from both countries as soon as he takes office on Jan. 20.

“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” he wrote in a social media post.

Canada is in a vastly different league from Mexico regarding the size of the immigration and narcotics problem posed to the United States, but it has recently been called a significant national security concern by Trump’s border czar pick Tom Homan.

And while there are far fewer people crossing illegally into the United States from Canada than from Mexico, that number has been increasing significantly in some areas.

Robert Garcia, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol for the Swanton Sector Vermont said on Oct. 2 that its agents have apprehended more than 19,000 subjects from 97 different countries since Oct. 1, 2023. The sector encompasses areas that border Quebec, including the state of Vermont and parts of the states of New York and New Hampshire. That number of apprehensions exceeds the total number of the last 17 years combined, Garcia said.

There has also been an overall increase of apprehensions across the entire northern border in recent years, though it has not been as pronounced.

Then-President Donald Trump (C) reaches out to Then-Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as they prepare to sign a new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that is replacing the NAFTA trade deal, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Nov. 30, 2018.  AP Photo/Martin Mejia

The U.S. government in August reacted to the increasing flow by tightening the rules for asylum-seekers, such as by reducing the allotted time to consult a lawyer from 24 hours to 4 hours. The two countries also announced changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement in 2023 to close a loophole. It is now illegal to make a refugee claim at non-official border crossings (before it was only illegal at official border crossings) if the claimant had first landed in the other country.

The U.S. northern land border as a whole saw nearly 199,000 encounters in fiscal 2024, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, an increase of over 9,500 from the previous year and an average of about 16,600 per month. An encounter refers to U.S. Border Patrol intercepting a “removable noncitizen.”

By comparison, CBP says there were over 2.1 million encounters at the U.S. border with Mexico in fiscal 2024, an average of about 178,000 per month.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller, in reaction to Trump’s tariff threat, said illegal crossings from Canada are the “equivalent, on a yearly basis, of a significant weekend at the Mexico border.”

“It’s not something that, at the same time, I want to not take seriously, because it is—it is serious,” Miller told reporters on Parliament Hill on Nov. 26.

While CBP encounters of illegal immigrants coming from Canada have increased in recent years, the agency’s drug seizure data show that the amount of drugs seized at the northern border markedly decreased in the last fiscal year.

CBP reported seizing some 11,600 pounds of drugs at the northern border in fiscal 2024 compared to 55,100 pounds in 2023. The border agency didn’t explain the drop or respond to a request for comment. Marijuana (6,800 pounds) and cocaine (2,400 pounds) were the most seized drugs, totalling over 9,000 pounds. Meanwhile, 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized.

Along the U.S. southern border with Mexico, some 275,000 pounds of drugs were seized in fiscal 2024, with methamphetamine taking top spot at around 158,000 pounds followed by marijuana (56,400 pounds), cocaine (30,400 pounds), and fentanyl (over 21,000 pounds).

But aside from illegal immigration and drug issues, future border czar Homan singled out the risk of terrorism when he called the U.S. northern border an “extreme national security vulnerability” during an interview with TV network WWNY earlier this month.

Homan’s concerns are reflected in the CBP’s enforcement data, which show that a significantly larger number of individuals on the U.S. terrorism watchlist have attempted to enter the country via Canada than Mexico in recent years. In fiscal year 2024, the northern border saw 358 such encounters compared to 52 at the southern border.

Border Security Concerns

Criminologist Kelly Sundberg, an associate professor at Mount Royal University who specializes on migration and border security, told The Epoch Times in an interview that he believes the security concerns about the U.S.-Canada border are valid.

Sundberg said Canada has had a customs and immigration processing program based on the “honour system” for over a decade. “When times are good, it’s gone unnoticed,” he said, but with the two recently foiled alleged terrorist plots involving newcomers, it has caught the Americans’ eye.

A father and son were arrested in the Toronto area this summer over an ISIS plot. The father had recently obtained Canadian citizenship and the son has refugee status. Another case involved a Pakistani national on a student visa arrested in Canada in September while planning to cross into the United States to allegedly kill Jews in New York City.

“Because of our lax immigration and customs control, not only have we seen an increase in drug smuggling, gun smuggling, the precursors for drugs, contraband items, tainted food, but we’ve seen toxic ideologies and toxic cultural practices becoming ingrained in our communities,” Sundberg said.

“The Americans see this, and anyone who didn’t see this coming has been living in an information bubble.”

The U.S.-Canada border has been a concern for Washington for some time, but this shouldn’t be lumped with issues at the U.S.-Mexico border, said Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Center for North American Prosperity and Security.

Tronnes told The Epoch Times that she doesn’t see the concerns about illegal immigration and drug smuggling as being a valid reason to impose tariffs.

“The reality is that Canada does have drugs crossing the border into the United States, but the United States also has drugs, and illegal weapons, and contraband cigarettes that cross the border into Canada,” she said. “So by Trump’s logic, Canada should be putting tariffs on the United States in order to stop the free flow of those goods.”

U.S. Border Patrol agents of the Swanton Sector on the U.S.-Canada border detain illegal migrants. U.S. Border Patrol photo

Tronnes also noted the upsurge of migrant crossings from Canada into the Swanton Sector recently, but Canada is also preparing itself in case of a “potential onslaught” of illegal migrants trying to avoid the mass deportations Trump has promised.

It’s a concern shared by Sundberg, who said Canada could see a “tsunami” of people crossing when Trump starts his deportation program. “We are going to be overwhelmed,” he said. “It’s going to be devastating.”

But regardless of how one sees the background, the two experts said Trump’s tariff threat over immigration and drugs is sending a strong message to the Canadian and Mexican governments.

“It definitely has caught the attention of policymakers,” Sundberg said.

Tronnes said the tariff threat could be part of a negotiating tactic with much larger ramifications than simply border issues.

“I think Trump wants to send a message that Canada and Mexico cannot band together to support each other in the face of a renewed free trade agreement,” she said.

The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the current North American free-trade deal that’s up for mandatory review in 2026, could be renegotiated then, and Trump said he plans to do so.

Tronnes said Trump’s message is particularly destined for Mexico, to signal that the country can’t count on Canada’s support while facing pressure over China using its jurisdiction to gain access to the North American market.

Canada’s Options

Negotiating tactic or not, Sundberg and Tronnes said Canada can implement a number of measures to tighten border security and alleviate the incoming U.S. administration’s concerns.

“We need to change our laws right away. We need to start doing outbound checks of people. We need to start collecting bio data. We need to start patrolling our borders. We need a border patrol. We need to hire more border officers,” Sundberg said. “We have a lot to do in two months.”

Some of these proposals are likely difficult to implement in such a short time, given the current gridlock in the House of Commons and human resource issues. However, Sundberg said Canada did strongly increase border security in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He said measures that can be implemented right away include putting in place outbound checks, soliciting the help of municipal police services along the border, and deploying new technologies.

“There’s lots of things that could be done and we need to do them,” he said.

Tronnes said Ottawa could increase the number of border officers to conduct targeted enforcement along hot spots such as in Quebec, or flag to the Trump administration the joint work being done to tackle cross-border transnational crime.

But the first thing is to find out more about Trump’s intent in linking tariffs to border security, she said.

“If I were the Canadian government, I'd have a lot more questions to be asking the proposed transition team about: What does this actually mean, and what are we looking at here in terms of whether or not any action is actually going to satisfy the Trump administration?” she said.

Shared Border Concerns

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said on Nov. 26 that he has been constantly working with the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to determine what additional tools or resources they require to secure the border.

LeBlanc said this includes acquiring new technologies, drones, and helicopters and deploying additional human resources.

“President Trump’s comments last evening are an opportunity for us to say to Canadians that we absolutely share the Americans’ concern around the integrity of the border, the security of the border,” LeBlanc said during a press conference in Ottawa.

The CBSA has mostly a defensive mandate to prevent the entry into Canada of illegal goods or inadmissible individuals, but the agency told The Epoch Times in a statement that it also dedicates resources to stopping illegal goods from exiting Canada.

The agency does so by “carefully monitor[ing] global trends and patterns,” said spokesperson Jacqueline Roby. Measures employed include using contraband detection tools at ports of entry, such as X-ray machines and detector dogs.

While the CBSA is responsible for security at ports of entry, the RCMP is responsible for security between the ports of entry along the border.

A CBSA officer speaks to a motorist entering Canada at the Douglas-Peace Arch border crossing in Surrey, B.C., on Aug. 9, 2021. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

The RCMP has been preparing various contingencies to respond to potential changes at the border following Trump’s electoral win, including a worst-case scenario where there’s a significant surge.

For the moment, however, there has been “absolutely no change” with the border situation, RCMP C Division spokesperson Cpl. Martina Pillarova told The Epoch Times.

C Division is responsible for the province of Quebec, which has been a key crossing point for migrants coming in and out of the United States.

Pillarova said the RCMP is limited by legislation in what it can do to prevent individuals from crossing into the United States.

“You can be walking by the border for hours and hours, and as long as you don’t do any criminal activity, or you didn’t commit any crime, well, we have no reason to arrest you, or we have no reason to detain you because you haven’t done anything,” she said.

The Mounties can still conduct some checks to verify that individuals are in Canada legally and don’t have arrest warrants against them. Beyond that, the force is limited in what it can do. Once an individual decides to cross the border, it takes a few seconds and it becomes a U.S. responsibility.

In these cases, the RCMP can communicate with CBP to signal the location of the crossing and the number of individuals involved.

The RCMP can also launch conspiracy investigations into individuals who provide transportation services to border-crossers, but these can be complex, said Pillarova.

‘Money to Be Made’

Pillarova would not comment on whether specific transnational organizations such as Mexican cartels have been involved in facilitating border crossings.

“However, obviously, where there is money to be made, most of the time criminal organizations are involved,” she said.

Canada has disrupted major activities involving transnational criminal gangs in recent weeks. The RCMP in B.C. announced in late October that it had dismantled the “largest, most sophisticated drug superlab in Canada.”

The force said the combined fentanyl and precursors seized at the facility in the town of Falkland, in B.C.’s southern interior, could have amounted to over 95 million “potentially lethal doses of fentanyl,” enough to kill “every Canadian, at least twice over.” Police said they seized 89 firearms along with small explosive devices and firearm silencers, among other items. The only suspect charged has been identified as Gaganpreet Randhawa.

Police investigate the site of a drug "superlab" in Falkland, B.C. RCMP handout

The RCMP said the superlab is linked to a seizure earlier in October of 30,000 kilograms of precursor chemicals at another B.C. location.

A June briefing note from Global Affairs Canada said seizures of made-in-Canada fentanyl in the United States and Australia suggest that “domestic production is likely exceeding domestic demand, and that Canada is now a source (and transit) country for fentanyl to some markets.”

The activities of criminal networks in Canada linked to Mexican cartels came into the spotlight last month when the RCMP announced charges against several individuals.

An Oct. 17 RCMP press release said police disrupted a Mexican cartel-linked criminal network allegedly led by Canadian Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder. The RCMP, who worked with the FBI on the case, said the network was moving large amounts of methamphetamine and cocaine from Central and South America via the United States to Canada and overseas.

“It also has been commissioning murders across North America, and laundering significant proceeds of crime,” the release said.