Republican presidential candidates turn attention to border with Canada

With the Republican primary in New Hampshire underway, candidates are turning their attention to border security concerns – this time at the Canadian border.

"What I have found out from New Hampshire is we don't talk enough about the northern border," presidential candidate and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday during a town hall. "The southern border is in terrible shape, but 500 people on the terrorist list, terrorist watchlist, have come through the northern border."

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According to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), 484 individuals on the Terrorist Screening Dataset, also known as the "terrorist watchlist" were apprehended at the U.S.-Canada border in 2023 compared to just 80 at the border with Mexico. Encounters with people on the terrorist watchlist have been falling at the Mexican border, but have been on the rise at the Canadian border.

Meanwhile, front-runner and former president Donald Trump, who oversaw the expansion of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, has mostly focused his rhetoric at tightening security at the southern border. But during a campaign rally in Iowa earlier this month, he remarked, "We also have a northern border that's not exactly doing too well."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, prior to dropping out of the race on Sunday and endorsing Trump, campaigned on increasing security at the northern border. Vivek Ramaswamy, who also suspended his campaign and later backed Trump, went as far as promising to build a wall between Canada and the U.S., citing the increase in fentanyl crossing the border.

In 2023, the U.S. CBP intercepted more than 239,000 doses of fentanyl at the northern border. That represents just 0.02 per cent of the 1.2 billion doses seized by the U.S. CBP last year.

Even at the state level, Republicans have been sounding the alarm about security at the Canadian border. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who is backing Haley, announced in October his state would increase state patrols along its sparsely populated 97-kilometre-long border with Canada.

However, polling suggests most New Hampshire residents don't seem to share these concerns. In a poll conducted earlier this month by the Boston Globe, USA Today and Suffolk University, only 36 per cent of respondents said they were concerned about the security of New Hampshire's border with Canada, while 61 per cent said they are "not at all concerned" or "not very concerned."

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden has taken steps to reduce irregular crossings at the Canadian border. Last March, Biden came to Ottawa and signed a deal with Canada to tighten the Safe Third Country Agreement to prevent migrants from making asylum claims if they've crossed via an irregular crossing like Roxham Road in Quebec.