“An extreme national security vulnerability” is how the incoming border tsar, Tom Homan, describes the American-Canadian border, foreshadowing what is sure to be a focal point of the incoming Trump administration.

Canada’s border with America — the longest in the world, spanning more than 5,500 miles — has recently seen an explosion of illegal crossings. The Border Patrol tracked nearly 24,000 migrant encounters in fiscal year 2024 — more than double the roughly 10,000 encounters in the previous year and more than ten times the number from two years ago. 

While overall migration encounters are higher on the southern border, the “percentage increases on the northern border are really extraordinary,” a border security expert at the Heritage Foundation, Simon Hankinson, tells the Sun. 

Indian nationals appear to be a driving factor of the recent surges. The Border Patrol recorded 14,197 encounters with Indian citizens in fiscal year 2024, compared to 1,630 in 2023 and only 237 encounters a year earlier. 

“It is an extremely populated country,” Mr. Hankinson says to explain the spike in Indians attempting to cross the northern border. With 1.3 billion people residing in India, “every year that means they’ve got to create something like 30 million new jobs, and there’s just not enough to keep everybody employed.”

Many of them will use platforms such as WhatsApp or TikTok to arrange rides across the border and into New York City or other American destinations, he says: “This kind of smuggling operation is getting much worse on the northern border.”

“There’s always going to be a proportion of Indian nationals who are looking to get out and get work all over the world, but the English-speaking world is obviously desirable because many of them speak English,” Mr. Hankinson adds. “The migrant trafficking organizations are willing to supply.” Canada’s lax immigration policies have also contributed, as the country of some 40 million people has welcomed swarms of newcomers in recent years under policies adopted by Prime Minister Trudeau.

“They’ve added just in 2023 almost 500,000 new permanent residents, which is a staggering number,” he says. “And the percentage of temporary residents, meaning people on a student and temporary work visas, is 7 percent of the population, and it actually doubled — it was 1.4 million in 2022 and now it’s 2.8 million a couple years later. So that’s a huge, huge number of people.” 

Many of those visas are set to expire in the coming years, he adds. 

“What are they going to do? There’s some possibility that not all of them are going to go home,” Mr. Hankinson says. “They’re going to try to find a way to stay in Canada. And if they can’t stay in Canada, they might try to head south into the States.”

Canada has recently pledged to crack down on immigration, following threats from President-elect Trump to impose tariffs on Canadian imports until its leadership took tougher actions to stem the flow of fentanyl and migrants illegally crossing the border. Canadian officials are planning to invest $1.3 billion in Canadian dollars — or $900 million American dollars — towards border security over the next six years, including investments in canine teams and drones, as well as expanding law enforcement’s authority. 

The Trump team has already touted that investment as a victory, saying that he will “never get tired of winning” and noting that it “didn’t take long for Canada to heed President Trump’s warning.” Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, also recently promised to “pay attention to” the northern border as soon as Trump takes office. 

“Raw numbers, the southern border of course has a lot more crossings,” Mr. Homan said in an interview with WWNY. “But percentage-wise, you got a lot fewer resources up here and Border Patrol agents, and so they’re overwhelmed and they’re not catching a lot of them, because there’s only so much the few resources up here can do.”

He promised to send more Border Patrol agents, end catch-and-release, and make it clear to illegal crossers that they will “be arrested.

“It’s an extreme national security vulnerability,” he said of the northern border. “And it’s one of the things I’ll tackle as soon as I’m in the White House.”

While Canada’s recent pledge to crackdown on immigration is a start, Mr. Hankinson tells the Sun he anticipates more actions from Canada and America over the next four years.

“I do think we will see more resources expended by both countries, and hopefully more cooperation, to make sure that the northern border doesn’t become as bad as the southern,” Mr. Hankinson tells the Sun. “Trump has made it clear that he wants the Canadians to do much more to help us secure the border, and that’s the focus for the time being.”