Porous Northern Border Alarms North Country Sheriff

By Joe Mahoney

(Special to the New York State Sheriffs’ Association)

ALBANY — The fact that so many unvetted, unauthorized individuals manage to cross New York’s border with Canada is a source of frustration for St. Lawrence County Sheriff Rick Engle.

“We are seeing an increase in numbers weekly,” Engle said in an interview from his office.

Engle is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who worked his way up the ranks at the sheriff’s department  before being elected sheriff last year.

He said he has been fielding reports from local residents and shop employees about migrants walking  across yards, peering into the windows of homes, drinking from outdoor faucets and even bathing in the  bathrooms of big box stores.

“Our local residents tell me they don’t feel safe in their homes because things like this are happening,”  Engle said.

Noting the vast majority of illegal immigrants being apprehended in the North Country are adult males  between ages 20 and 40, he said he winces when news reports label them “asylum seekers.” While some  may claim they qualify for asylum status, he said there is often no documentation to support such claims. In some cases, Engle added, there is no documentation identifying who they actually are.

The increase in encounters residents are having with illegal immigrants, the sheriff said, have caused him to worry about the potential for vigilante action.

“It’s concerning to me because I don’t want the citizens of St. Lawrence County to take matters into their own hands,” said Engle, who is assisted in overseeing the Sheriff’s Office by Undersheriff Shawn McCarger. “I want them to call us and give us the opportunity to deal with this.”

Sheriff Engle’s observations concerning a surge in illegal crossings at the northern border are confirmed by new federal government statistics.

During the current federal fiscal year, a total of 16,500 migrants have been taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol agents after they crossed into this country from Canada. That figure is a marked rise from one year earlier, when there were 10,000 such apprehensions. And that was a jump from 2,200 in 2022.

In fact, the latest data reflects the highest Border Patrol apprehension total at the northern border on record.

Now, with a national election approaching in November, the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris signaled this month that changes are being implemented to address this unprecedented increase in migrant crossings at the northern border, CBS News reported last week after obtaining an internal Department of Homeland Security memo.

The new efforts deal with changes in the federal government’s “Safe Third Country” asylum agreement with Canada designed to speed up the processing of asylum seekers at the northern border.

Meanwhile, the ongoing crisis at the Mexican border has prompted the federal government to shift Border Patrol agents from the northern border to the southern border, creating an incentive for those planning to attempt sneaking into the United States from Canada, Engle said.

As it is, the northern border presents special challenges for law enforcement. The expansive terrain includes large forested tracts, mountains and locations such as the Akwesasne Native American reservation straddling northern New York and Canada.

Along the 445 miles of international border it shares with Quebec and Ontario to the north, New York is home to 17 land border crossings.

Popular crossings include several in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls region – the Peace Bridge, Rainbow Bridge, Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, and Lewiston-Queenston Bridge. In addition, there are the Thousand Islands Bridge, the Seaway Bridge (Massena Cornwall), and Blackpool Champlain. The others include the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge, Fort Covington Dundee, Trout River, Jamieson Line, Chateauguay Herdman, Churubusco Franklin, Cannon Corners Covey Hill, Mooers Hemmingford, Overton Corners Lacolle and Rouses Point.

Engle said many of the illegal immigrants his deputies encounter found places other than St. Lawrence County to slip into the United States. But they do use St. Lawrence County — New York’s largest county in area — as a crossroads, often taking Interstate 81 to reach interior portions of the state.

The sheriff pointed out it is necessary and in fact essential for his deputies and investigators  and other New York state and local law enforcement agencies to collaborate with federal immigration and Border Patrol agents. But that partnership has suffered due to a law that has blocked New York government officials — including sheriffs, criminal investigators and county clerk employees — from sharing state motor vehicle information with federal immigration officials, the sheriff said.

“How do they expect us to not be able to share information with them when we are dealing with the same people?” Engle said, noting he works on investigations with federal officers while serving on a federal task force.

The Green Light law was signed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo despite howls of protest from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the time that agency was under the former Trump administration. Federal officials said then that blocking federal law enforcement officers from accessing DMV records created “a significant threat” to both public safety and to those officers.

Engle isn’t the only New York law enforcement official taking issue with the state’s sanctuary laws for undocumented immigrants.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said his city is being overwhelmed by a surge in arrivals of migrants, resulting in shelters overflowing.

Following the recent rape of a woman on Coney Island, an act allegedly carried out by two illegal migrants, the NYPD Chief of Patrol, John Chell, spoke out against the fact that one of the suspects had been released from jail two months earlier after being accused of sexually assaulting another victim.

Chell told WCBS the second rape would have never happened if that suspect was expelled. “When that case was adjudicated, his next step should have been on a bus or a plane  and removed from our city,” Chell reasoned.

Meanwhile, on August 14, a suspected Peruvian gang leader who has been linked to 23 killings in his home country was apprehended after residing in the upstate community of Endicott for the past three months. That individual had been arrested after entering the country illegally, only to be released and head to Endicott at a time when authorities had yet to establish his identity. The resulting controversy prompted U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro to demand that the nation’s border with Mexico be closed and blast what he called the “open borders” approach that allowed the gang leader to enter the United States.

With the ongoing political battle for the White House heating up before the November election, Engle said he anticipates that illegal crossings at the northern border will increase even more in the weeks to come.

“It’s like a race to the finish line,” the sheriff said, noting migrants are eager to cross into this country now in the event  the next administration moves to tighten border security.

Knowing his county’s northern border is part of the porous international border has become a major source of stress for the sheriff.

“I go to bed thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it,” he said. “I want to do the right thing but it would be a crime for me to share driver’s license information to the federal agents,” he said. “It’s a misdemeanor to come into the country illegally. But it is a felony for me to share the DMV information with the federal agencies.”

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