Border czar Tom Homan said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s administration plans on “reassigning assets” to crackdown on illegal immigration flooding through the U.S.-Canadian border.
Illegal crossings have decreased at the U.S.-Mexico border by 96% and by 74% at the northern border, prompting the administration to refocus their attention up north as crossings at the southern border have declined so dramatically, Homan said. The border czar will begin sending resources located at the southern border northward to better enforce the number of illegal immigrants and fentanyl coming across the U.S.-Canadian border.
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“Well, like I said, the southern border is down 96%, the northern border is down by about 74% so we have more work to do up there,” Homan said. “I’ve met with the leadership in Canada on two different occasions, they are stepping up border enforcement, they are stepping up the fentanyl enforcement, but not enough. The president wants more and we expect more. So, I grew up on the northern border, it’s personal to me. So, we need to do more on the northern border now that we’ve got the southern border locked down.”
“And instead of stealing agents from the northern border to deal with the crisis on the southern border, now we’re gonna start reassigning assets to the northern border, manpower and technology, to make sure that the northern border is safe too,” Homan continued.
Illegal encounters at the northern border have drastically dropped since Trump assumed office on Jan. 20, decreasing from over 11,600 encounters in December to just over 4,000 in Feb, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. During former President Joe Biden’s administration, illegal border crossings at the northern border spiked over 1,000% throughout his term in office and had recorded its largest number of weekly migrant arrests in May.
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Border Patrol agents witnessed a rise in Indian and East Asian migrants crossing the northern border in the 2024 fiscal year, Biden’s final year in office. In recent years, most migrants apprehended at the northern border were Mexican nationals who had flown into Canada because the country did not require a visa for them at the time, though that policy has since changed.
In the 2022 fiscal year, more than half of the migrants crossing the northern border had flown into Canada from Latin American countries, multiple officials previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation at the time.
The Trump administration almost immediately reversed the border crisis at the southern border since taking office. Homan revealed in a Feb. 17 statement that Border Patrol encountered 229 illegal immigrants in a single day, the lowest number of encounters recorded since the 1960s.
Trump made history as Border Patrol agents apprehended a record-low total of 8,347 illegal immigrants in the entire month of February, marking a 71% decrease from the previous month when 29,101 were caught. The Biden administration oversaw a record high number of illegal immigrant encounters, with the highest single-day record occurring on Dec. 18, 2023, when more than 12,600 migrant encounters were made on just that one day.
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Homan said during his Thursday interview that he feels like a “kid in a candy shop” when he witnesses illegal immigrants being detained and deported.
The president imposed a 25% tariff on Canada and 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum over its role in allowing illegal immigrants and fentanyl to flood into the U.S. When the tariffs were first announced in February, former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invested $1.3 billion in adding resources to the northern border and appointed a fentanyl czar to fight the drug epidemic in the U.S.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
