The Brewing Disaster at the Northern Border, and Why It Matters
Border lessons Joe Biden could learn from Justin Trudeau
By Andrew R. Arthur on April 6, 2023
I appeared as a witness at a congressional hearing last week on “Biden’s Growing Border Crisis: Death, Drugs, and Disorder on the Northern Border”. The key takeaway is that there is a brewing disaster at the U.S.-Canada line, but largely missed is why it matters and what lessons in border security President Biden could learn from his Canadian counterpart, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Northern Border in Context. The Northern border is massive — at 5,525 miles, it’s nearly three times the length of the Southwest border (1,954 miles). As at the U.S.-Mexico line, protecting our international boundary with Canada is the responsibility of the Border Patrol, but the comparative staffing between the two borders is hardly equivalent.
As of the end of FY 2020 — the last year for which published statistics are available — there were nearly 17,000 Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border, but just over 2,000 at its Northern counterpart, a more than 8-to-1 ratio.
That said, there has long been a question of how much protection the Northern border demands. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 called for a study on the need for more infrastructure there, but I’m not sure it was ever completed. That said, the USA PATRIOT Act authorized a tripling of the Border Patrol cadre at Northern Border (there were 340 agents there in FY 2001), while staffing has increased more than six-fold in the interim.
It's long been referred to as ”the world’s longest undefended border”, and it more or less remains just that — largely undefended by either side.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Brewing-Disaster-Northern-Border-and-Why-It-Matters
