President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency this year for the northern border for human smuggling and drug trafficking. While the nearly 4,000-mile border with Canada gets less attention than the high-volume southern border, the boundary presents its own set of challenges. The Washington Examiner visited the northern border to evaluate how security has changed under the new administration for the series Threats from Up North: Patrolling the U.S.-Canada Border. Part 3 is on the technology used to secure the border.
CHAMPLAIN, New York — Technology has largely taken the place of a physical wall on the U.S.-Canada border, where federal law enforcement officials depend on digital systems and electronic devices to multiply their presence.
The northern border is the longest in the world, though none of it has a wall like the U.S.-Mexico border barrier.
At a time when the White House is pushing Congress to pass tens of billions of dollars in funding for more wall at the southern border, federal police up north say the investments in tech have proven themselves and should be strengthened.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel told the Washington Examiner during a tour of the border in upstate New York that they want to see more technology incorporated in how they do their jobs, patrolling the vast spaces between border crossings and inspecting vehicles coming through the ports of entry.
Challenges of no border wall
A wall covers roughly 750 miles of the 1,950-mile southern border, and most of it was erected during the first Trump administration.
On the 4,000-mile northern border, there is no towering steel wall to prevent illegal immigration, even though Border Patrol agents have the same responsibilities as those on the Mexico border. Up north, they especially depend on drones, ground sensors, infrared cameras, and long-range cameras, given that there are thousands fewer personnel with twice as long a border to patrol.
Some lawmakers who supported a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, including Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), do not see the benefit of such a barrier along the twice-as-long Canadian border.
“There are parts where, look, a wall isn’t going to stop people,” Tenney said in an interview. “What it does is slows them down so that the Border Protection can get time to get to people and find people that might actually be committing crimes or trafficking either people. It’s a little trickier with the weather conditions and also with these waterways.”
A recent ride-along with Border Patrol’s Raymond Bresnahan, the chief patrol agent in charge of Swanton Sector’s Champlain Station in Champlain, showed the Washington Examiner an area where cars used to drive through cornfields and ditches to get into the United States and how agents on the ground have stepped up physical security to meet the moment without militarizing the border.
In one situation, Border Patrol installed cement blocks on the edge of two properties to prevent vehicles from being able to drive through. Since the installation of those cement blocks, the occasional vehicle smuggling attempts in that area have ceased.
Technology present at the northern border
Cameras fixed to electrical poles, trees, or signs capture individuals or groups walking across the border into the U.S. Each of the Border Patrol’s 49 stations on the northern border only has so many cameras it can deploy due to financial constraints.
Bresnahan said one challenge with cameras and sensors is that agents must always monitor them, which pulls personnel from the field.
Among the newest additions on the northern border are BuckEye cameras fixed onto a plate crafted to look like tree bark. The cameras blend in with the landscape and are difficult for passersby to recognize when illegally walking over the border. Border Patrol requested that the Washington Examiner not share photographs of the cameras for national security reasons.
“As far as Americans having faith in what we’re doing, we are now using 3D printing machines,” Bresnahan said. “We’re printing fake trees that have the cameras. There is some really cool stuff going on.”
More technology requested
Some of the technology used on the southern border is not adequate logistically or functionally up north, according to Scott Good, the chief of Border Patrol’s Law Enforcement Operations Directorate in Washington.
“This technology also has to be developed in a way that they can withstand the harsh temperatures and the harsh environments that we see on the northern border,” Good said in an interview. “You get out to these remote places in these large expanses on the northern border — there is no electricity. … It’s really not a big deal for us to use solar power for that, right? But you start getting these areas where the snow falls onto the solar panels, or it’s just cloudy for long periods of time and you don’t see the sunshine for a long time. That’s another thing that we have to look at. How do we extend battery life in cold weather?”
Although every Border Patrol agent has a handheld radio, the devices can lose range in remote areas. Agents need repeaters, which are devices that can extend communications in otherwise dead zones, in addition to satellite capability.
Existing technology, such as live-feed cameras installed up and down the border, must be monitored 24/7. If they are not being watched, people or vehicles that pass through high-traffic areas can go unnoticed and evade arrest if a Border Patrol agent is not in the vicinity.
“Unless somebody’s literally just staring at the screen as that person comes across, we won’t know that we had an entry,” Bresnahan said.
Bresnahan said he wants to see technology that incorporates artificial intelligence to differentiate between animals and people picked up on camera.
Agents also need cameras that can see beyond the line of sight, particularly in areas that have few agents working because of their remoteness, according to Good.
Technology improvements needed
In a Senate appropriations hearing on May 8, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) pointed out that in her home state, Border Patrol agents have good technology, but some of it does not work.
“In New Hampshire, we have video cameras that are supposed to pick up people coming across the border, and there’s no service to those video cameras because we don’t have cell service on our northern border,” Shaheen said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who testified during the same hearing, agreed with Shaheen that a fix for that shortcoming is needed.
“The cameras you talked about, yes, do need to be fixed,” Noem said. “The cellphone service, and their reliance on that is not dependable, and we need the new technology upgrades in order to make sure that we can keep those operating. And we need more [unmanned aerial systems], and counter-UAS technology at the northern border as well.”
At the ports of entry where passengers, vehicles, and cargo are inspected, CBP’s Detroit Port Director Marc Calixte told the Washington Examiner that the massive machines that trucks can drive through for imaging can scan up to 800 trucks per day. Future versions of those devices will likely be able to operate at a greater speed and use AI to screen images.
For example, density readers can be held up against an object and measure the density of a vehicle’s tire, boxes, or cargo. The density reading indicates if something else, such as narcotics, is concealed within that item.
Partnerships and shared database help catch terrorists
CBP officials also touted the cross-border, electronic sharing of information between the U.S. and Canadian law enforcement authorities, particularly in the case of suspected and known terrorists trying to enter either country, as being critical to safeguarding the border.
In fact, there are more people on the FBI terrorism watch list caught trying to enter the country along the Canadian border than any other part of the country.
Between fiscal 2022 and 2024, roughly 1,500 people were stopped at the northern border and southern border’s ports of entry seeking admission and later determined to be on the FBI terrorism watch list.
Approximately 85% of the 1,500 encounters of suspected and known terrorists were caught at the Canadian border trying to enter the U.S., FBI Director Kash Patel said during a Fox News interview that aired Sunday.
A DHS report on northern border threats that was published in 2018 revealed that terrorism threats “are primarily from homegrown violent extremists in Canada who are not included in the U.S. Government’s consolidated terrorist watch list and could therefore enter the United States legally at Northern Border ports of entry (POEs) without suspicion.”
Judson Murdock, deputy executive assistant commissioner for CBP’s Office of Field Operations, told the Washington Examiner that the U.S. works closely with Canada to share information so that the U.S. can make the best decision about whether to admit someone from outside the country.
“We have joint task forces that allow investigations to continue into Canada by our Canadian partners, and we also host Canadian law enforcement at our [National Targeting Center],” Murdock said. “This further streamlines our information sharing.”
The Canadian government has also allocated $1.3 billion for border security and immigration matters, including for chemical detection tools and scanners to be used at its own ports of entry, according to a spokesman for the Canadian Border Services Agency.
Would new budgets cover northern border
The White House has pointed to the “one big, beautiful bill” as the solution to border security.
“Over 77 million Americans voted for a secure border and safer communities, and the Trump administration is intent on using every lever of executive power to deliver on this mandate,” White House spokesman Kush Desai wrote in an email.
MOST ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARRESTED NEAR CANADA BORDER ENTERED FROM MEXICO
White House officials did not provide specifics on the types of technology they would like to see added to the northern border but said the pending budget reconciliation bill that cuts taxes and adds more border funding will help.
“Once Congress delivers the One, Big, Beautiful Bill for President Trump to sign, the Administration will add cutting-edge technology to our arsenal to safeguard our borders and country,” Desai said.
