As southern border crossings plummet, northern border patrol direct hiring for help

By Michael Bielawski

On Friday’s Morning Drive radio show, two spokespersons from the US Border Patrol confirmed some reduction in northern border illicit activity since November, but they are still direct hiring for help.

“I would say it’s just as big a problem [as it’s been],” said the Swanton Sector’s Division Chief Richard Parker. “We have had a couple of years of record traffic flow, illicit cross-border traffic in the Swanton sector.”

The whole episode can be found here.

The Swanton Sector covers Vermont, three New Hampshire counties, and the eastern half of New York’s border.

Parker continued on the upward trend of illicit crossings. He said compared to the annual averages before this surge that started around 2023, there’s been about a 17-fold increase in incident volume.

“It went from about 7,000 apprehensions [per year] two years ago to 19,000 apprehensions last year,” he said. “That is unprecedented for anywhere on the northern border.”

There may be recent hope for a turnaround. VDC noted that northern border crossings have dropped to their lowest levels since late 2023.

Also on the show was recruiter Jeff Vining, who highlighted that they are direct hiring for the Swanton Sector. This means it may not be necessary to serve time on the southern border, as is often the case for non-direct hires. The direct hiring will end at the end of March.

To start the show, they took a moment to remember the Swanton Sector’s lost Border Patrol Agent David C. Maland during a deadly traffic stop-turned-shootout on Jan. 20.

“That is the first line of duty death in the Swanton sector. Frankly, it doesn’t matter where it is. It impacts the entire Border Patrol to know that one of our own has gone down,” Parker said.

Parker said it’s an ongoing investigation and did not provide further details other than to say, “We’ll see this thing through… We don’t know where it’s going to go.”

Slowed down a bit

He talked about how things have changed under the new administration.

“Things have slowed down a bit,” Parker said. “But it is no less impactful to us enforcing immigration law in the communities along the border.”

They were asked what percentage of the people coming in are coming just to find work versus getting into any kind of trouble. He said he didn’t have those numbers.

“What I can tell you is that it’s a crime to cross the border regardless of what reason you are trying to enter,” he said.

The Hill noted that because crossings have dropped to a 25-year low at the southern border since November of last year, more folks may be looking to the north to cross.

“The U.S.-Canada frontier is the largest land border in the world. Much of this border is remote and unguarded, and the sectors in the east are a relatively short drive from several major airports in Canada,” they wrote. “Those looking to travel to the U.S. illegally and human smugglers appear to have caught on.”

A story from Center Square in November of 2024 offered more concerning data.

“They apprehended 19,385 foreign nationals from 97 countries who illegally entered from Canada [during 2023], ‘smashing’ last year’s record, and totaling more than the previous 17 years combined, Swanton Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Robert Garcia said,” the report states.

Nationwide, the Border Patrol was busy on Tuesday with six news releases detailing incidents. The most recent one says they arrested a sex offender among a group that was smuggling three women into Tucson, Arizona. Another one says they arrested “Three aliens from the Dominican Republic for smuggling 39 aliens into Puerto Rico.”

The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle