New York, Vermont and New Hampshire counties have seen a record uptick in illegal border crossings in the last quarter as more migrants are reportedly crossing into Canada to avoid detection.
As more migrants swarm the southern border, increasing numbers have turned to the less-fortified, more expansive U.S.-Canada border, the New York Times noted in a report published Sunday, detailing how U.S. officials at the northern border have recorded 191,603 encounters with people crossing into the United States last year, a 41% increase from 2022.
While most still use legal ports of entry, more than 12,200 migrants were apprehended crossing illegally from Canada in 2023, a 241% uptick from the 3,578 arrested the previous year.
Canada does not require travelers from Mexico to have a visa to enter the country. As a result, the Times report said, a 295-mile strip of the border along those northeastern states known as the Swanton Sector has seen a tremendous increase.
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NY SHERIFF SOUNDS ALARM ON MIGRANTS CROSSING CANADA BORDER, WARNS CARTELS ‘THRIVE IN OUR VERY OWN BACKYARDS’
U.S. Border Patrol encounters a group of four adult males from Bangladesh on Feb. 1, 2024, near Mooers, New York, after crossing illegally from Canada.(U.S. Border Patrol Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia/X)
“The record-breaking surge of illegal entries from Canada continues in Swanton Sector. A citizen’s report in Champlain, N.Y., led to the arrest of 10 Bangladesh citizens. Agents rely on the vigilance of our community. If you see something, say something! Call 1-800-689-3362,” U.S. Border Patrol Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
Since Oct. 1, 2023, Swanton Sector Border Patrol Agents have apprehended more than 3,100 people from 55 countries, Garcia wrote in a prior post on X this month, noting those apprehensions in just the last quarter make up more than the total illegal crossings in fiscal 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019 combined for the Swanton Sector.
He shared a photo that shows an early morning apprehension of four adult males from Bangladesh on Feb. 1, near Mooers, N.Y.
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The Swanton Sector makes up Vermont; the Clinton, Essex, Franklin, St. Lawrence and Herkimer counties of New York; and the Coos, Grafton and Carroll counties of New Hampshire.
Border Patrol officials said 15 missions have rescued 37 migrants along the northern border since October 2022, the Times reported.
Clinton County Sheriff David Favro, whose office has been involved in some of those missions, told the Times that migrants often get lost in the woods for hours or fall into freezing water and suffer hypothermia. He described a need for more “boots on the ground” to monitor the northern border. Currently, federal officials estimate about 2,200 Border Patrol agents monitor the U.S.-Canada border, which stretches 5,525 miles and is considered the longest international border in the world.
Though none is in place now, Canadian government officials are considering imposing a visa requirement for Mexican travelers after Quebec Premier Francois Legault warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month to stem the flow of asylum seekers as city services were near a “breaking point,” Reuters reported.
Border Patrol credited a citizen’s report in Champlain, N.Y., for leading to the arrest of 10 Bangladesh citizens who entered the U.S. illegally via Canada.(U.S. Border Patrol Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia/X)
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ILLEGAL MIGRANT ASKED TO ‘FINISH THE JOB’ IN SLAYING FELLOW MIGRANT AT NYC SHELTER: PROSECUTOR
At least a dozen migrants, including families, children and a pregnant woman, have been found frozen to death in rivers or in the forest over the past two years while attempting to cross the U.S.-Canada border. Federal prosecutors in Syracuse, N.Y., have been building several cases against American and foreign-based human smuggling operations advertising online to help guide migrants across the Canadian border into the United States in exchange for thousands of dollars per person.
Last month, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York ordered the extradition of a Columbia man living in Quebec on smuggling-related charges related to the death of a 33-year-old woman who was five months pregnant and found frozen to death in a river near Champlain, N.Y., in December.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers encounter migrants at the Roxham Road border crossing in Champlain, N.Y., on March 25, 2023.(Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images)
Prosecutors say the man advertised on TikTok and accepted $2,500 from the woman and her husband to help guide her by text message as she walked alone across the border. The woman’s husband, already in the U.S., notified Border Patrol when the woman never emerged from the woods, the Montreal Gazette reported.
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The Times described how Plattsburgh, N.Y., has become a layover stop for migrants who cross the Canadian border and often haggle with ride-share drivers or bus operators for discounted lifts – often for the five-hour drive to New York City or other destinations. A gas station there has become an unofficial meeting point for migrants strapped for funds, and local motels are often forced to take migrants in during the winter under a rule that requires them not to turn away travelers when temperatures drop below freezing.
Two migrants from Venezuela told the Times they came to Montreal, took an hour-long Uber ride south and walked over the border through the woods until they were stopped by U.S. immigration officials. The pair said they underwent a criminal background check and were granted parole, meaning they were released into the United States while awaiting court dates.
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On the flip side, Canadian immigration officials have been known to reject asylum claims from migrants seeking to move north over the border. A Colombian man who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and en route to Canada to reunite with his sister told the Times that Canadian immigration officials turned him away.
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Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on Twitter: @danimwallace.
A person holds a giant penny at a mock funeral for the coin, which was discontinued in 2025, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
What good is a penny at this point? Penny candy is a thing of the past, and a modern-day penny-pincher wouldn’t get very far if this were their get-rich strategy.
(This newsletter, though, costs you less than a penny. Chip in if you can.)
U.S. mints no longer make pennies, a decision that saves taxpayers an estimated $56 million annually. When the U.S. Treasury Department announced the country would stop minting them, it marked the end of an era — sorta.
Though those pesky copper-colored coins remain in circulation, some businesses, both in Vermont and nationwide, have begun experiencing penny shortages.
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Enter H.837. The bill outlines a plan that could allow retailers to phase out the penny by rounding up or down cash transactions to the nearest nickel.
Other states, including Arizona and Indiana, have passed rounding legislation, and a handful of others are considering it. As written, Vermont’s bill wouldn’t require rounding, a similar approach favored in other jurisdictions.
Some Vermont businesses have already adopted rounding. But lobbyists for Vermont businesses say some of their members fear the practice — without explicit state blessing — could open a business up to a lawsuit over alleged unfair and deceptive practices.
Worried or not, rounding will likely become more necessary as pennies get harder to find, Maggie Lenz, a lobbyist for the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association, told the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Tuesday. She encouraged the state to create a rounding framework, but discouraged lawmakers from making such a program mandatory.
Rep. Tony Micklus, R-Milton, agreed that rounding should be optional, but said the state should mandate a specific rounding framework for the businesses that choose to round.
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H.837’s approach, which would round down totals ending in 1,2,6 and 7 cents, and round up totals ending in 3, 4, 8 and 9 cents, would seem to be the fairest to consumers and businesses, those who testified agreed.
But the change is likely not net neutral. Zachary Tomanelli, a consumer protection advocate for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, cited a Federal Reserve study that indicated rounding could cost consumers $6 million annually nationwide. That’s because businesses price goods in ways that tend to lead to rounding up.
He called the cost modest and said he generally supported the bill.
Despite H.837 not making it past the crossover deadlines, there’s still hope that pennies might make it into Vermont’s currency cemetery. Rep. Michael Marcotte, R-Coventry, the commerce committee’s chair, said his committee could stick the rounding legislation in the Senate’s economic development bill.
That said, you might not want to ditch your pennies quite yet.
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In the know
Here are some numbers for you: Between 2012 and 2022, Vermont’s primary care workforce declined by 13%. In that same time period, the specialist workforce grew by 23%. That’s according to testimony Jessa Barnard, with the Vermont Medical Society, gave to lawmakers in the House Health Care Committee Tuesday. She said the numbers are reflective of a trend in medicine nationwide, attributed to the fact that primary care docs often make less but pay the same high cost for medical school as their peers in more specialized roles.
In Vermont, Barnard said that this widening gap is leading to a particularly acute shortage. According to a report her organization put out in 2022, the state needs 115 primary care providers to meet the national benchmark for our population size. That figure includes OBGYNs, pediatricians and family medicine docs. By 2030, as our state’s population grows even older, the Vermont Medical Society expects the state to need 370 more primary care physicians to meet the national benchmark.
— Olivia Gieger
Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, spoke with members of the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Tuesday afternoon about S.327, an economic development bill that supports a number of public resources for business owners across the state.
The bill has had a tough go of it so far.
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Clarkson handed out copies of what she referred to as “the actual bill,” which meant the package voted out by her own Senate Economic Development Committee before being “pretty much fully gutted” on its way through the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In a tight budget year, she said, this bill’s focus was on “supporting what works really well” for Vermont businesses. For Clarkson, that means continuing to invest in the initiatives like the Vermont Economic Growth Incentive program, a set of grants to help businesses expand in the state, which is scheduled to end in January. The Senate, she pointed out, has voted to extend the program for several years in a row, most recently through S.327.
“I am charging the House with doing the same thing,” she said.
Clarkson is also in favor of deepening the state’s relationships with outside investors by funding state delegates abroad. Vermont, she argued, should have more well-placed representation in areas like Québec — which this bill would provide for — and in the future Taiwan, which recently pledged to invest heavily in U.S. tech industries.
“We need somebody whose hand is up saying ‘yes, over here!’” Clarkson said.
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House commerce members met informally with a delegation from Taipei later Tuesday.
— Theo Wells-Spackman
On the move
The Senate advanced a bill Tuesday that would allow parents in Essex County to pay tuition to send pre-K students to New Hampshire schools.
In Vermont’s most rural county, families struggle to access pre-K programs, at least on this side of the border.
But S.214, legislation originally proposed by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast, would allow for a handful of families near the New Hampshire border in Essex County to tuition their pre-K-aged children to New Hampshire schools, Sen. Steve Heffernan, R-Addison, said on the Senate floor.
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Kindergarten through grade 12 are already able to tuition to New Hampshire schools.
The Senate will need to vote on the bill once more before sending it to the House.
Vermont and the federal government faced off Monday over the state’s first-in-the nation law aimed at forcing polluters to pay for the effects of climate change with the Trump administration warning it would spur “the type of chaos that the Constitution is designed to prevent.”
The hearing before Judge Mary Kay Lanthier of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont comes as the administration has unleashed a broad assault on state-based climate efforts, including suing to invalidate the Vermont law establishing a “climate superfund” to recoup money from the oil and gas industry.
The Biden appointee did not tip her hand, pressing attorneys for the state and the federal government over whether the state is within its rights or stepping on federal authority. The administration is challenging a similar law in New York, and a ruling against Vermont would likely jeopardize that law and chill efforts in other states to adopt climate superfunds.
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Vermont argued the law — “a modest action” — was passed by state lawmakers in 2024 to help raise money to deal with climate change.
RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – Attorneys defended Vermont’s landmark climate superfund law on Monday, as it faces a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration.
Vermont lawmakers passed the Climate Superfund Act in 2024 after devastating flooding in 2023 and other extreme weather events.
The law requires certain large fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate-related damage linked to their emissions between 1995 and 2024.
It is being challenged by the federal government, along with the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and attorneys general from 24 Republican-led states.
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They argue Vermont is overstepping and that climate policy should be handled at the federal level.
Attorneys for Vermont and environmental groups asked a federal judge in Rutland to dismiss those challenges, arguing the state has the right to hold companies accountable.
“It was an intense and technical day of legal arguments over whether the Climate Superfund Act passes muster under federal law, and whether it is appropriate under our Constitution and other doctrines, and is going to survive this series of lawsuits that have been filed against it,” said Christophe Courchesne of the Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Vermont was the first state to pass a law like this. New York followed, and more than 10 other states are considering similar measures.
This case could help decide whether those laws move forward.
