Trump’s border czar says Canadian border is an ‘extreme’ vulnerability
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s border czar says there is an “extreme national security vulnerability” along the Canada-U.S. border that he plans to deal with the moment the new Republican administration takes power.
Tom Homan, named Sunday as the official in charge of all U.S. border issues, said in a television interview that he expects there will be “tough conversations” with Ottawa about the situation along the Canada-U.S. border.
“The problem with the northern border is a huge national security issue,” Homan told 7News in Watertown, N.Y., a community some 40 kilometres from a crossing into eastern Ontario. Homan is from the area.
He said “special interest aliens” — individuals from countries the U.S. says sponsor terror — use Canada as a gateway into the U.S.
“Because they know, [there’s] a lot less, fewer officers here,” Homan said. “It’s one of the things I’ll tackle when I’m in the White House.”
In raw numbers, irregular crossings along the U.S. border with Mexico substantially outpace those over the Canadian border. However, human smuggling activity from Canada has risen sharply over the past two years, particularly along the border between eastern Ontario, Quebec, New York and Vermont.
U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents apprehended over 19,000 individuals, from 97 different countries, through this area over a 12-month span ending Oct. 2, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics.
That’s more than were apprehended throughout the same area over the previous 17 fiscal years combined, according to a recent post on X by the USBP’s Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia, who is in charge of the region, which is known as the Swanton Sector.
This has created friction with U.S. officials along border areas and their concerns were picked up by Trump during the election campaign and by his former Republican challengers Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy during the primary race.
Knows the region
Homan comes from West Carthage, N.Y., which sits about 70 kilometres southeast of Ontario’s Thousand Islands region on the St. Lawrence River.
“It’s home, I’m not going to ignore home,” he told 7News.
Homan, a former acting director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he will be working in the White House and reporting directly to Trump while overseeing the new administration’s plans for border crackdowns and mass deportations.
Trump, Homan said, must work with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to see that Canada’s immigration laws are enforced.
“There has to be an understanding from Canada that they can’t be a gateway to terrorists coming into the United States,” he said.
Gabriel Brunet, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, said in an emailed statement that the two countries have a “shared interest in deepening collaboration on cross-border issues.” The statement said Canadian law enforcement agencies “are working day in and day out, with their U.S. counterparts” to maintain the integrity of the border.
LeBlanc “looks forward to building a constructive and positive relationship with whomever President Trump selects as his or her Secretary of Homeland Security,” said the statement. Trump said Tuesday his nominee for that job is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
U.S. pressure over irregular border crossings played a role in Canada’s decision this past winter to reimpose some visa requirements on Mexican nationals entering the country. At the time, Mexican nationals were one of the biggest drivers behind the rising numbers of irregular crossings into New York state and Vermont.
U.S. data now places India as the top source country for irregular crossings from Canada.
In an interview with Catherine Cullen, host of CBC Radio’s The House, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said her message to the rest of the world is that Canada welcomes newcomers in an ‘organized, systematic way.’
Tom Kmiec, the Conservative party’s critic on the immigration, refugee and citizenship file, says the Liberals made an “error” in 2016 when they removed visa requirements from Mexican nationals and then “slow walked” the reversal. The previous Conservative government of Stephen Harper initially put the visa requirements in place.
Kmiec also referred to the recent cases involving an Egyptian-born father and son duo and a Pakistani student arrested in Canada for allegedly planning separate ISIS-linked attacks in Toronto and New York City. The student was allegedly planning to enter the U.S. with the help of human smugglers.
“On border security and visa integrity, the Liberals just aren’t worth the cost,” Kmiec said in a statement.
A deadly business
Human smuggling in Canada is a lucrative business, with some organized crime groups charging between $1,500 to $6,000 US per person for trips that often begin in Toronto or Montreal, then head through borderland areas of rivers, farmlands and forests.
Some journeys turn fatal. This past December, Ana Karen Vasquez-Flores, a 33-year-old pregnant Mexican woman, was found dead near Champlain, N.Y., after crossing from Canada.
The RCMP announced in June it had taken down an international smuggling ring allegedly connected to the St. Lawrence River drowning deaths of two families — one from India and the other from Romania — in March 2023. Both families were being smuggled into the U.S.
Published at Fri, 01 Nov 2024 08:11:21 +0000
Israeli forces kill 22 people in Gaza, force new displacement in the north
Israeli military strikes killed at least 22 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave.
Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.
Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue toward Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said.
Israel’s campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fuelled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers.
“The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction,” said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya, who arrived in Gaza City on Wednesday.
“North Gaza is being turned into a large buffer zone, Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing under the sight and hearing of the impotent world,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Saed was referring to the 1948 Middle East Arab-Israeli war which gave birth to the state of Israel and saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their home towns and villages in what is now Israel.
The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hardliners in his government have talked openly about going back.
International aid groups say Israel has failed to meet a series of U.S. demands intended to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by a Tuesday deadline. The U.S. said Israel could face restrictions on military aid if it did not improve the aid situation in Gaza.
It said forces have killed hundreds of Hamas militants in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun during its new military offensive, which began more than a month ago. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed killing several Israeli soldiers during ambushes and anti-tank rocket fire.
Ceasefire efforts fail to end war
Efforts by Arab mediators, Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have so far failed to end the war in Gaza, with Hamas and Israel trading the blame for the lack of progress.
Speaking on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel “has accomplished the goals that it set for itself” by taking out Hamas’ leadership and ensuring the group is unable to launch another massive attack. “This should be a time to end the war,” he said.
“We also need to make sure we have a plan for what follows,” he said, “so that if Israel decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan so that Israel can get out of Gaza and we make sure that Hamas is not going back in.”
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Blinken’s comments showed: “We are facing one enemy and that the U.S. enmity against the Palestinian people is no less than that of the occupation.”
On Tuesday, the United States stressed at the UN that “there must be no forcible displacement, nor policy of starvation in Gaza” by Israel, warning such policies would have grave implications under U.S. and international law.
Attacks across Gaza Strip continue
Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added.
Later on Wednesday, an Israeli strike on a house in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip killed eight people, medics said.
Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year, Palestinian health officials say, and much of Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble, where more than two million Gazans are seeking shelter in makeshift tents and facing shortages of food and medicines.
Published at Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:28:21 +0000