Former border protection chief says all US borders matter, calls for expanded security focus

With U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reporting almost 2.4 million encounters with undocumented aliens along the southern border in fiscal year 2022, it's easy to forget the U.S. also has a far longer border in the north.

But that would be a dangerous error, warns former acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan.

"To protect our nation, it's not just about the southern border, and it's not just about our land borders," Morgan said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "Some people forget about the northern border, for example. The shared border with the United States and Canada is actually two and a half times the land border we share with Mexico."

That's a lot of border to protect — and it's not as quiet as one might suppose.

"Our northern border is over five thousand linear miles that we share with Canada," Morgan continued. "And there's a real threat that the intelligence community has noted, whether through Canadian homegrown violent extremists or it having one of the largest maritime environments that we share between two nations."

Given its vast length and often underestimated threat environment, the northern border is relatively underresourced, with less technology and fewer border patrol agents than the headline-making frontier with our neighbor to the south, according to Morgan.

"There's a 700% increase of migrants trying to get in" from the north, he told Just the News during a phone interview. "And that's just one sector in the northern border. But they don't talk about the gotaways because they have no idea."

Mexican migrants are increasingly flying to the more thinly policed Canadian border to enter the U.S. from that direction, according to recent reports.

"These migrants are changing their tactics, techniques and procedures," noted Morgan. "Mexican citizens are flying to Canada because it's easier to immigrate from the northern border than the southern border."

It's not enough to guard land borders to secure the nation against the illegal movement of people and drugs into U.S. territory, Morgan pointed out, with air and sea security also an integral part of the overall equation. 

CBP officials recently testified that drug cartels have been using drones to help them track  border parol agents. These drones have also helped the cartels smuggle people and drugs, according to Morgan. 

“The news media has been reporting drone activities from the cartels," he noted. "That's nothing new. They're making money hand over fist. It's a 13 billion dollar business just with human smuggling."

Flanked by oceans, the U.S. can also be vulnerable to illegal entry via sea. "Cuban nationals and a mix of other migrants such as Haitians are using the coastal waterways to illegally enter the U.S.," Morgan said. "It's not just immigrants coming in, but drugs as well."