Midwest
US northern border faces Great Lakes threat from ‘bad actors’ pressing waterfront weaknesses: expert
As the White House focuses on cracking down on illegal immigration on the southern border, an expert warns that the maritime industry along the northern border faces threats from bad actors and the risk of foreign influence.
Fox News Digital spoke with Jim Weakley, president of the Lake Carriers’ Association and retired U.S. Coast Guard officer, about national security risks along the Great Lakes and the Detroit Sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which covers parts of Michigan and northern Ohio along the U.S.-Canada border.
“What people outside our region or outside of law enforcement often don’t understand is that border security—or any type of perimeter security—is a lot like a tube of toothpaste: if you apply pressure in one area, such as the southern border, the threat simply shifts to another part of the perimeter,” he said.
“So, as we—rightfully, in my view—reinforce our southern border, which has proven to be significantly lax, bad actors looking to smuggle terrorists, humans, fentanyl, or other contraband will likely redirect their efforts to our northern border.”
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A ship sails down the St. Clair River under the Blue Water Bridge border crossing between Canada and the U.S. near Sarnia, Ontario, on April 3, 2025. (Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images)
Weakley said that the lower standards in Canada serve as a national security risk in the U.S., due to the stricter inspection and manning regulations.
“To work on a U.S. vessel, officers must be U.S. citizens and most crew must be at least green card holders, with limits on how many non-citizens can be on board. In contrast, Canada allows sailors and officers from a wide range of countries, including the Philippines, Jamaica and Ukraine.”
“Canadian companies can also issue pilotage endorsements, unlike the U.S., where it’s tightly regulated by the U.S. Coast Guard. That means a Canadian vessel, even on Lake Michigan—where there’s no Canadian border—could be operated by foreign nationals with minimal oversight. They also carry fewer pilots and use cheaper, Chinese-subsidized ships, which further lowers their costs.
Weakley argued that the standards are a national security risk and a major reason why Canada dominates 90% of the cross-lake shipping market, putting U.S. carriers at a disadvantage.
Crew members of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Katmai Bay prepare to return to port following ice-clearing operations near Lake Huron in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, on March 15, 2023. (Matthew Hatcher/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As the Great Lakes region plunges into the wintry weather, the lakes freeze over and provide human smugglers with another way to traverse across to America, Weakley explained.
“The vastness of the Great Lakes makes border security and law enforcement far more complex, especially when the Canadians aren’t pulling their weight,” he said. “In fact, I don’t believe they have any law enforcement presence on the Great Lakes during the winter.”
When the ice melts, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Ontario Provincial Police operate patrol boats, he explained.
“We’re doing much more to secure the border on both sides. However, the Canadians are doing less, which forces the U.S. to take on a greater share of the responsibility. And as we strengthen our southern border, the threat along the northern border is only going to grow.”
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A tugboat pulls a barge along the St. Clair River between Michigan and Ontario, Canada. (Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)
By the numbers
During testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee, FBI Director Kash Patel told lawmakers adversaries such as China and Russia have started to target the northern U.S. border with Canada.
“The enemy adapts,” Patel said.
The Trump administration has overseen a dramatic shift at the U.S. southern border since taking office in January, with the number of CBP recorded encounters plummeting by 90% in most sectors compared to the same time period last year. The administration has poured in resources to stop the spiraling immigration situation at the southern border.
The sudden silence there came after record-setting numbers of illegal crossings during the four years of the Biden administration, a trend that also saw a dramatic increase in attempted crossings by immigrants outside of North and Latin America.
WATCH: Chinese migrants are cause for concern, expert warns
Chinese nationals were among the most likely to attempt illegal crossings, with the number of crossings from citizens of the country rising to over 24,000 in 2023, a more than 5,200% increase from the 450 encounters just a year earlier, according to CBP data.
Overall, Patel told lawmakers that between 2022 and 2025, roughly 178,000 Chinese nationals attempted to cross the southern border.
ILLEGAL-SMUGGLING COYOTES NOW ADVERTISING AT CANADA BORDER AMID TRUMP MIGRANT CRACKDOWN: REPORT
Detroit Sector
CBP declined to comment but pointed to data that depicted encounters at the Northern Land Border in the Detroit Sector, broken down by fiscal year (FY) and demographic group.
FY 2024 had the highest monthly peaks, especially in May (139 encounters) and July (74). FY 2022 had consistently very low encounter counts, never surpassing 35 per month.
FY 2025 saw a large jump in February (139) compared to only 53 the same month in FY 2024.
Read the CBP data. Mobile users click here
Single adults consistently dominated the encounters in the Detroit Sector, data showed. Single adults peaked in FY 2024, with 604 encounters.
The trend is continuing into FY 2025, with 338 encounters to date, suggesting it could surpass previous years if the trend continues.
Read the full article from Here
LANSING, Mich. – Michigan’s coyotes are back to year-round pressure from hunters and trappers after a major policy reversal by state game regulators.
The state Natural Resources Commission voted unanimously on Wednesday on a controversial measure to allow coyotes to be killed all year long, backtracking on a position the state had successfully defended in court. Hunting groups immediately praised the change.
“It empowers landowners, safeguards the wildlife, protects our agricultural community and upholds Michigan’s conservation legacy,” said Merle Jones of the Michigan Trappers and Predator Callers Association.
Previously, Michigan game regulators had established a “quiet period” when coyotes could not be killed from mid-April to mid-July. That’s when coyote pups are vulnerable and not yet weaned from their mother’s milk.
State officials had been motivated by concern that hunters would leave young coyotes orphaned, turning public perception against hunting more broadly. Hunting groups balked at that notion and sued the state to overturn the policy.
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Last June, an Ingham County judge ruled against the hunting groups; an appeal of the decision remains pending.
Since then, the NRC has faced months of calls from hunters to restore coyote hunting opportunities. That’s while animal rights activists urged commissioners to stay the course.
This week the commissioners responded to the pressure from hunters.
Regulators didn’t fully restore year-round hunting and trapping of coyotes, though.
Instead, the NRC expanded “out-of-season” killing of overabundant coyotes or those causing interspecies conflicts on public and private lands, according to the approved state wildlife order.
A coyote hunting and trapping season will run from Oct. 15 through March 1. Then what regulators call a “management season” will cover the remainder of the year, when coyotes could only be killed on private property.
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The new rules will take effect March 1 this year.
The coyote regulation changes also drew opponents to this week’s meeting in Lansing.
Mitchell Nelson of Humane World for Animals nonprofit criticized the language of the wildlife order. He specifically complained that interspecies conflict isn’t defined, nor is a standard for what qualifies as an overabundance of coyotes.
“We don’t even have a current population count of coyotes, so with no accurate additional count of coyotes, no metrics for determining relative coyote abundance and distribution in an area, and no reporting requirement for the killing of coyotes, the concept of addressing overabundance is rendered completely meaningless,” Nelson told the commissioners during public comments.
“The bottom line is that increasing the random and indiscriminate killing of coyotes will not achieve any management objective,” Nelson said.
Game regulators also heard from a state scientist during their meeting.
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Commissioner John Walters asked the furbearer specialist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources whether it’s believed the change to coyote regulations would have any negative effect on the species population.
“We do not expect this proposed change to have a population level impact on coyotes,” said Cody Norton, DNR wildlife biologist.
Research has shown that more than 70% of coyotes in an area must be killed to reduce the population. As prolific breeders, the animals can recover their population within a year if only 60% are removed.
Rebecca Humphries, NRC chairperson, said the change is meant to address nuisance animals without altering the regular hunting and trapping season.
“The whole concept is to try and keep the integrity of the hunting and trapping season when they’re used as a furbearer species for pelts, and then outside that give people essentially the ability to take the species whenever it’s causing problems for them,” Humphries told MLive.
SAINT PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota Wild President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Bill Guerin today announced the National Hockey League (NHL) club has recalled defenseman David Špaček (SPAH-chehk) from the Iowa Wild of the American Hockey League (AHL).
Špaček, 22 (2/18/23), owns 19 points (3-16=19), 61 shots and 10 penalty minutes (PIM) in 35 games with Iowa this season, leading the team in assists (T-12th among AHL defensemen) and ranking second in points and shots. The 6-foot, 190-pound native of Columbus, Ohio, recorded 31 points (4-27=31), 31 PIM and 117 shots in 72 games with Iowa during the 2024-25 season, leading the team with 18 power play assists, ranking second in assists, and pacing team defensemen in scoring. For his career, Špaček owns 62 points (10-52=62), 62 PIM and 251 shots in 168 games over three AHL seasons (2023-26).
Špaček will represent Czechia at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic games and has previously represented Czechia at multiple international competitions, including the 2025 IIHF World Championship, where he recorded two assists in eight games, and the 2024 IIHF World Championship, where he posted five assists in 10 games to help Czechia secure gold. He also helped Czechia to a silver medal at the 2023 IIHF World Junior Tournament, recording eight points (3-5=8), 11 shots and a plus-7 rating in seven games.
Špaček was selected by Minnesota in the fifth round (No. 153 overall) of the 2022 NHL Draft and has yet to appear in an NHL game. He will wear sweater No. 82 with the Wild.
Minnesota will host the Winnipeg Jets tomorrow, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. CT on FanDuel Sports Network and KFAN FM 100.3.
Minnesota Wild single-game tickets are on sale now at wild.com/tickets, ticketmaster.com and at the Grand Casino Arena Box Office. Flex, 11-Game, half and full season memberships are also available for purchase. Please visit tickets.wild.com or contact a Wild Ticket Sales Representative by calling or texting (651) 222-WILD (9453) for more information. Group reservations of eight or more tickets can contact [email protected] for more information. Single game suite rentals are also available, contact [email protected] for more information.
Follow @mnwildPR on X and visit www.wild.com/pressbox and for the latest news and information from the team including press releases, game notes, player interviews and daily statistics.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – Last year, 88.4 million lightning strikes occurred across the United States. Missouri ranked 10th in lightning flashes per square mile.
Lightning flashes increased 10 percent in 2025 compared to 2024.
With nearly 90 million flashes last year, that amounts to 3.7 flashes an hour and 62,000 flashes a minute.
43 percent of the strikes were cloud-to-ground flashes, meaning the majority, 57 percent, were cloud-to-cloud.
Oklahoma ranked No. 1 with 73 flashes of lightning per square mile, and Texas ranked No. 1 with 13.3 million flashes total in 2024.
Kansas came in fourth with more than 5 million strikes, and Missouri ranked 11th at 2.6 million.
Copyright 2026 KCTV. All rights reserved.
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