A “quiet crisis” is emerging at the U.S.-Canada border, as one expert proposes an unconventional solution to fight human smuggling: leveraging advanced technologies like artificial intelligence.
While national attention is largely fixed on the southern border, an increasingly concerning situation is unfolding along the country’s northern border, said Jon Brewton, the founder and CEO of Data2 and a U.S. Air Force Veteran.
“U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has seen a fairly alarming increase in illegal crossings, drug trafficking, and even encountering individuals on the terrorist watch list,” he told Fox News Digital. “And as difficult as securing the southern border has been, the northern border is twice as long.”
While the vast majority of illegal crossings happen at the southern border, officials have been warning for years that the northern line has seen an increase.
During testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee, FBI Director Kash Patel told lawmakers last week adversaries such as China and Russia have started to target the northern U.S. border with Canada.
“The enemy adapts,” Patel said.
The Trump administration has overseen a dramatic shift at the U.S. southern border since taking office in January, with the number of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded encounters plummeting by 90% in most sectors compared to the same time period last year. The administration has poured in resources to stop the spiraling immigration situation at the southern border.
The sudden silence there came after record-setting numbers of illegal crossings during the four years of the Biden administration, a trend that also saw a dramatic increase in attempted crossings by immigrants outside of North and Latin America.
Chinese nationals were among the most likely to attempt illegal crossings, with the number of crossings from citizens of the country rising to over 24,000 in 2023, a more than 5,200% increase from the 450 encounters just a year earlier, according to CBP data.
Overall, Patel told lawmakers that between 2022 and 2025, roughly 178,000 Chinese nationals attempted to cross the southern border.
CBP’s Swanton Sector, which spans 295 miles of the border with Canada and covers all of Vermont and parts of upstate New York and New Hampshire, has seen more apprehensions in the last fiscal year than the previous 13 years combined.
According to a report on CBS 19, the sector has seen 15,000 apprehensions in the 10 months of fiscal year 2024, the largest volume ever recorded by the sector, over 14,000 more than was recorded in fiscal year 2024.
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The report noted that migrants from 85 different countries have attempted to illegally cross in the area.
Brewton said that there are unconventional ways that technology can be used to secure the 5,525 miles of border between the U.S. and Canada.
“And so there are some non-traditional ways that we can use technology as a capability multiplier,” he said. “That’s just something a little bit different than just hiring more agents and building physical processes in what is a really substantial amount of land that is rocky in territory, cold and snowy and hard to manage.”
“I think that is where AI can help change our trajectory and success on the northern border.”
Brewton explained that AI could play a powerful role in border security – enhancing surveillance, radar systems, and open-source intelligence, while also helping agents monitor water crossings more effectively.
“And using radar systems to understand the full scope of intelligence that’s at our disposal, but using really, really smart tools to combine that intelligence in a smart way and use it at scale,” he said.
Traditional security systems operate in silos – each collects and processes data separately – but using AI models could give a full, connected picture, he explained.
People often misunderstand border security as just invasive surveillance, Brewton said, but when done right – especially with well-designed AI – it can actually improve both security and privacy by being smarter and more targeted.
“A lot of people really assume border security primarily means privacy, invasive surveillance, like facial recognition and biometrics and the roles that they can play within sort of pattern recognition. It’s really about identifying suspicious behaviors and connecting different pieces of intelligence to individuals that we’re monitoring,” he said.
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Brewton emphasized that citizens should have both strong safety measures and strong protection of their rights.
“Well-designed AI delivers enhanced protections for Americans and our communities while maintaining the transparency and accountability that our citizens, and quite frankly, our government, require,” he said. “So if we’re smart about what we do, we can make really, really impactful changes to what we’re doing on the northern border and the southern border.”
The Trump administration has pressured Canada to enhance its border security to stop the upward trend of the flow of migrants and fentanyl by implementing 25% tariffs on imports from Canada. Energy resources from Canada will have a lower 10% tariff.
“I know that the president’s agenda has really been to try to understand how we can work with Canada and seek concessions from our neighbors to the north to help secure the border in both directions,” he said. “The government really needs to use all of its tools at its disposal.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Michael Lee contributed to this report.
