Sixteen caught crossing illegally into U.S. from Quebec in days before Trump tariff threat

On a late Saturday afternoon, two days before U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs on Canadian goods over migrants and fentanyl, the RCMP alerted U.S. Border Patrol about a group of people crossing illegally from Quebec into an area near Chateaugay, N.Y.

Border Patrol agents initially spotted the group, but then lost them in the forests along these borderlands. Then, at about 7 p.m. ET, they found a white Acura with New Jersey plates parked on a dirt road near the border. The driver told the agents he was looking for a hotel before driving off.

The group that crossed from Canada remained at large as the day shift handed off their duties to the night shift, which took up the search. Then, shortly after midnight on Sunday, agents again saw the white Acura RDX, which headed for the backroads along the border and executed a pick-up.

This led to a high-speed chase, with odometers hitting 140 kilometres an hour, that ended on a nearby highway.

"There were now six passengers, including one individual in the trunk compartment attempting to conceal himself under backpacks and clothing," said a criminal complaint filed with the U.S. Federal Court for the Northern District of New York, which described the encounter.

"The passengers claimed to be from Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala, and all admitted to crossing the border illegally earlier in the evening."

Between Thursday and Sunday, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended at least 16 foreign nationals crossing illegally into the U.S. through the Quebec border with New York State and Vermont in three separate incidents, according to court records. 

Each of the events, involving individuals from India, Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala were the result of human smuggling operations, according to evidence outlined in U.S. court documents. Court records show human smugglers charged between $3,000 US to $5,500 US each to smuggle people into the U.S.

On Monday, Trump threatened to impose 25 per cent tariffs on every product entering from Canada and Mexico unless both countries stopped the flow of migrants and fentanyl entering the U.S. across their respective borders.

The RCMP told CBC News Wednesday there's no evidence that fentanyl produced in Canada poses any kind of growing threat to the U.S. 

Overall illegal border crossings from Canada into the U.S. amount to a fraction of the movement across the northern Mexican border. U.S. Border Patrol intercepted more than 21,000 migrants crossing illegally from Canada in the first 10 months of 2024, according to data published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

U.S. border agents apprehended over 56,000 people crossing from Mexico this past October alone.

However, the majority of illegal crossings from Canada — 18,000 over the last 10 months — flowed across the border between eastern Ontario-Quebec and New York State, Vermont and New Hampshire. It's an area that U.S. border authorities call the Swanton Sector, and it's seen a dramatic rise in irregular border traffic over the past two years.

While illegal crossings since 2007 through this area hovered between the low hundreds to around 1,000 a year, they saw a sudden rise in 2023 with over 6,000 and then a surge over the past several months.