While attention often focuses on America’s southern border, a quiet crisis has been unfolding along its northern border, where the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seen alarming increases in illegal crossings, drug trafficking and encounters with individuals on terrorist watchlists. As difficult as securing the southern border has been, the northern border is more than twice as long and crosses a variety of challenging terrain. 

While the Trump administration works to secure the southern border, government leaders must ensure that our northern border is safe.

The statistics are sobering. Customs and Border Protection reported 108,000 encounters along the northern border between October 2023 and March 2024, more than the 98,696 encounters in the entire previous year. More concerning, 85 percent of all land border encounters with individuals on the terrorist watchlist in 2023 occurred on the northern border. A year later, the percentage is even higher: 93 percent were encountered at the northern border.

Potential criminals and terrorists know that America’s attention is elsewhere. Each of these statistics shows a threat to our national security and public safety.

 

A group of people crossing the Canada/US border illegally and detained by U.S. Border Patrol near Champlain, N.Y.
(CREDIT: USBP)

President Trump’s aggressive tariff and trade policy with Canada has sought concessions to help secure the border and stop the flow of drugs into the United States. This tactic may ultimately prove effective, but the U.S. government must still use all of the tools at its disposal.

This includes some non-traditional tools that were previously unavailable. Securing the northern border will require more than hiring and deploying Customs and Border Protection agents or building physical barriers. It will ultimately require the use of leading-edge technology.

The challenges along our northern border demand an approach that uses cutting-edge technology and data-driven intelligence to achieve comprehensive awareness and targeted enforcement. Artificial Intelligence, for example, can and must transform how we monitor, analyze and respond to border threats.

Knowledge graph-based AI solutions represent a significant advancement in border security capabilities. These systems excel at integrating diverse data sources, from sensor networks and satellite imagery to intelligence reports and historical crossing patterns, into a unified, interconnected model. Unlike traditional database approaches, which struggle with complex relationships, graph technology reveals critical connections between people, places, events and organizations that might otherwise remain hidden.

The value comes from transparency and traceability. Every insight generated can be traced back to its source data, ensuring that frontline officers and decision-makers can trust and verify the intelligence they receive. This is a crucial requirement for any use of AI in high-stakes security operations.

The beauty of technological solutions like AI is their scalability. Physically monitoring 5,525 miles of border with human agents would be prohibitively expensive for taxpayers, especially when also deploying significant assets to the U.S.-Mexico border. Strategic deployment of technology is much more efficient and affordable, allowing existing personnel to focus their efforts where they’ll have the greatest effect.

While technology provides powerful analytical capabilities and processes vast amounts of data, human expertise remains irreplaceable. The most effective approaches combine advanced AI systems with experienced analysts and field agents who can contextualize findings and make nuanced judgments that algorithms alone cannot. This collaboration between technology and human expertise creates a multiplier effect, dramatically enhancing situational awareness across the entire northern border region.

This intelligence-driven approach could enable Customs and Border Protection to go from reactive enforcement (after someone has already crossed the border) to proactive deterrence by disrupting criminal networks before they can exploit border vulnerabilities. A shift from reactive to proactive enforcement would be an unprecedented transformation in border security.

The administration and CBP must ensure they use the latest technology available to stay one step ahead.