The Canada - United States Border - Canada's Potential Terrorist Problem

With the trade war over border issues between Canada, Mexico and the United States now active, I wanted to take a look at some little reported enforcement statistics from the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

  

Customs and Border Protection is the federal government agency that is responsible for securing America's borders and has the following mission statement:

 

"Protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nation’s economic prosperity."

 

It undertakes its mission through the following responsibilities:

 

1.) keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the United States.

 

2.) facilitating lawful international travel and trade.

  

CBP combines customs, immigration, border security, and agricultural protection into one coordinated and supportive activity.

 

Now, let's look at President Trump's Executive Order "Imposing Duties to Address the Flow of Illicit Drugs Across Our Northern Border" which was signed on February 1, 2025 which focuses on the flow of illegal drugs across the northern and southern borders of the United States.  The Executive Order also states this:

 

"The challenges at our southern border are foremost in the public consciousness, but our northern border is not exempt from these issues.  Criminal networks are implicated in human trafficking and smuggling operations, enabling unvetted illegal migration across our northern border....

 

...Pursuant to the NEA, I hereby expand the scope of the national emergency declared in that Proclamation to cover the threat to the safety and security of Americans, including the public health crisis of deaths due to the use of fentanyl and other illicit drugs, and the failure of Canada to do more to arrest, seize, detain, or otherwise intercept DTOs, other drug and human traffickers, criminals at large, and drugs."

 

Note the "enabling unvetted illegal migration" and "failure of Canada to arrest...criminals at large".

 

Now, let's look at some statistics from Customs and Border Protection.  Here is a table showing how many encounters CBP had with individuals who are on the U.S. terrorist watch list for both the southern and northern borders by year:

 

 

Here is the text that accompanies the table with my bolds:

 

"This table provides a summary of CBP encounters of all persons at ports of entry with terrorism-related records at the time of their encounter and non-U.S. citizens with terrorism-related records at the time of their encounter between U.S. ports of entry.  Terrorism-related records may include records from the U.S. Government’s Terrorist Screening Dataset. As such, the information is protected from public disclosure and provided only to persons who have a need to know, such as federal law enforcement officials, for their authorized screening and vetting functions.

 

Though terrorism-related encounters at our borders represent an extremely small portion of total border encounters, the screening process to identify such individuals is an example of the critical work CBP Agents and Officers carry out every day on the frontlines. DHS works tirelessly to secure our borders through a combination of highly trained personnel, ground and aerial monitoring systems, international collaboration, and robust intelligence and information-sharing networks.

  

Noncitizens who match to a terrorism-related record that are encountered by the CBP Office of Field Operations at land ports of entry are most commonly found inadmissible to our country and immediately repatriated or removed. They may also be turned over to another government agency for subsequent detention and law enforcement action, as appropriate. When encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) after entering the country without inspection, these noncitizens are most commonly detained and removed or turned over to another government agency for subsequent detention and law enforcement action, as appropriate."

 

Since and including fiscal 2022, there have been far more individuals with terrorism-related records attempting to cross into the United States from Canada than from Mexico.  In fact, between fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2025 (so far), 220 individuals with terrorism-related records have attempted to cross into the United States from Mexico compared to 1260 individuals who crossed into the United States from Canada, nearly 6 times as many.

  

This begs the question; how did so many individuals who appear on the United States terrorist watch list end up in Canada?  While not all of them are "terrorists", one could easily assume that at least some of them are.  Is it because of Canada's open arms policy toward immigrants under the Trudeau "post-nation state" government and the inefficiency of its Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Ministry?  Or is it Canada's haste to grow its population by immigration as shown here:

 

In any case, given the statistics from the United States Customs and Border Protection, one can understand why the Trump Administration is more than a bit concerned about who is crossing from Canada into the territory for which it is responsible.