Migrant smuggling operation a huge concern along Canada’s border

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A sophisticated migrant smuggling operation along the Canadian border has increased significantly in the last three years.

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While much of the talk of migrants in the United States has centred mostly on Texas and New York, Vermont residents have offered a glimpse into what the crisis has been like for them.

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The New York Post spoke with some residents in and near Swanton, Vt., a town located just across from New York’s Lake Champlain — a 10-minute drive from the St-Armand/Philipsburg border into Quebec and about 60 kilometres east of the Roxham Rd. crossing.

The hamlet was an ideal spot for hunters, but the area has provided camouflage for smugglers, waiting on migrants destined for other locations.

Local Chris Feeley told the Post things began changing about three years ago when he was up in a tree and saw a group of deer run by as they were being followed by two men “of Mexican descent” — not a common site around those parts.

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Feeley noted their backpacks, walking sticks and one of them looking at his smartphone, which he believed was a map of the area.

“He stopped right underneath me and was looking at his iPhone and was following a trail, so obviously somebody gave him a route of which way to go,” Feeley told the publication.

“I was just stunned, I didn’t know what to do. I just let them walk off, I gave them 10 minutes before I went back to the barn to call Border Patrol.”

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Feeley has since become a regular calling up border officials, and he now claims to have them on speed dial as his trail camera spots migrants “at least once a week.”

Feeley said that in the past year or so, things have gotten “real crazy” and border agents even advised him to carry a pistol “because nine out of 10 of them are just here for a better life, but there’s that one guy that’s got a rap sheet.”

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He noted that migrants travel through the woods before being picked up by private, out-of-state vehicles.

An employee at a gas station about one kilometre from the Canadian border described a regular parade of “getaway vehicles” in the parking lot across the street, while a dairy farmer said he often spots migrants crossing through his corn field.

The number of migrants illegally entering the U.S. at the northern border last year hit 12,200 — a 240% spike from 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection data, the Post reported.

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