POROUS BORDER: The U.S. northern border continues to make headlines as illegal entries have doubled over the last several months compared compared to last year.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday released a report detailing the number of illegal crossings at the northern border, which has about doubled since last year.

According to the Customs and Border Protection data, border agents at the U.S.-Canadian border counted 4,827 migrant encounters between October 2022 and April 2023. In all of fiscal year 2022, agents stationed along the northern border encountered 2,238 illegal migrants.

Between October and April, 2,458 of the illegal entries came in from Mexico.

Visas are not required for Mexicans to travel to Canada. Instead, they must only spend about seven Canadian dollars for what is called ‘electronic travel authorizations’.

Sean Walsh, president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), is cited in the report saying the northern border is “less secure than it ever has been.”

New Hampshire state senator sounds alarm

On Sunday, New Hampshire State Sen. Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, discussed the implications of the report for the northern border as well as for Vermont and the region.

“The statistics are pretty compelling actually, a 1,300% increase of interactions at the northern border not just in New Hampshire but the region of New Hampshire, Vermont, and upstate New York,” Bradley said.

“So I think it is a problem, we’re seeing fentanyl pour across the southern border we want to make sure actually with a pretty small amount of money that would enable state police and local law enforcement assist the federal authorities in making sure that we are doing everything that we can to ensure that New Hampshire does not become the southwestern border and all the problems that we have there.”

Dangerous temperatures

In late March, a Mexican woman who had crossed illegally and during cold temperatures was rescued with the help of local residents when her feet were starting to get frostbite.

The report states that residents observed “someone walking in freezing temperatures through fields and ditches near the outskirts of Champlain, New York. Agents conducted a brief search and discovered a woman shuffling shoeless through the snow, using a tree branch for support.”

In another dramatic story from December involving the Vermont/Canada border, agents were alerted to a group that was in danger in a forested area of Churubusco, New York. They discovered near the border a family with three young children “attempting to navigate a heavily wooded area in near-freezing temperatures,” the report states.

Residents upset

Dan Cohan, a resident on the northern border, told the Daily Caller that he fears once the snow melts there’s potential to find those who didn’t make it among the treacherous cold.

“Most of them I would say were either Mexicans or Guatemalans and the occasional Romanians,” Cowan said, sharing that he fears finding bodies of illegal migrants who didn’t survive the cold when the snow melts at the end of the winter.

Legal threats from the ACLU?

The Vermont ACLU is preparing to go after Border Patrol if they resume checkpoints at certain locations, according to a report by the Burlington Free Press on Friday.

The release details that there was an agreement for now that the checkpoints will not continue.

“The agreement announced Friday settled a 2020 lawsuit over the use of the checkpoints in Woodstock, where the American Civil Liberties Union claimed that border agents conducted illegal searches and seizures that led to the arrest of American citizens for violating state drug laws that had nothing to do with immigration,” the report states.

Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.