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The US Canadian border: Greatest number of terrorist watch list individuals being apprehended at northern border

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A Border Patrol agent standing watch at the Montana-Canada border in the CBP Spokane Sector. The Spokane Sector covers the U.S.-Canada border along the northwestern section of Montana, part of Idaho, and the eastern part of Washington.

From The Center Square 

Lack of operational control at northern border poses national security threats

The northern border largely has been unmanned and understaffed for decades as federal reports issue conflicting conclusions about how much, or how little, operational control exists.

Some officials have suggested the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has just 1% operational control over the northern border after a 2019 General Accounting Office audit of U.S. Customs and Border northern border operations. But a December 2022 DHS report claimed, “The Border Patrol is better staffed today than at any time in its 87-year history,” noting no surveillance of extensive parts of the northern border existed prior to 9/11.

After 9/11, several federal agencies were combined to fall under the newly created Department of Homeland Security. Within 20 years, roughly 950 miles along the U.S.-Canada border from Washington to Minnesota, and roughly 200 miles along the northern border in New York and Lake Ontario, were under unmanned aircraft surveillance. None of these areas “were covered prior to the creation of DHS,” DHS says, meaning the northern border was largely unprotected since Border Patrol’s founding in 1924.

In 2012, DHS released its first unified department strategy for U.S.-Canada border security, prioritizing “deterring and preventing terrorism and smuggling, trafficking, and illegal immigration; safeguarding and encouraging the efficient flow of lawful trade, travel, and immigration; and, ensuring community resiliency before, during, and after terrorist attacks and other disasters.”

Within 10 years at the northern border, more than 2,200 Border Patrol agents were stationed between ports of entry; nearly 3,700 CBP officers were stationed at ports of entry; more than 35 land ports of entry were modernized; and thermal camera systems, mobile and remote video surveillance systems had been deployed.

Havre Sector Border Patrol agent patrolling northern border on an ATV. The Havre Sector covers the U.S.-Canada border along most of Montana’s northern border, and includes part of Idaho and all of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.

Despite these improvements, “the northern border is under-resourced by far compared to the southwest border,” former Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan told The Center Square. “But at the same time, it still represents significant threats. Cartels are expanding their operations, flying people into Canada, which doesn’t require a visa, presenting an opportunity for terrorist watch-listed individuals to exploit. It’s much easier to get to Canada to come across.

“Data from 39 months shows terrorist watch-listed individuals are coming here every day and they aren’t stopping,” Morgan added.

For years and prior to the current border crisis, there weren’t enough personnel to cover all shifts, and the infrastructure, technology and equipment afforded to them didn’t compare to those at the southwest border, he said. People can easily drive snow mobiles over frozen territory or boats across the Great Lakes in areas that are unmanned, Morgan said, with a previous policy of self-reporting to authorities.

“The northern border represents a threat,” Morgan said. Noting it only took 19 men to carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Morgan has warned that a terrorist threat is already in the U.S. No one knows how many terrorist watch-listed individuals have illegally entered who weren’t caught, multiple officials have told The Center Square.

While much attention has focused on the southwest border, the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists to ever be apprehended in U.S. history were at the northern border in fiscal 2023, breaking fiscal 2022’s record, The Center Square first reported.

This fiscal year through April, the greatest number of KSTs (known or suspected terrorists) continue to be apprehended at the northern border, 143 so far, according to CBP data.

Potential terrorist threats are not new and have persisted for some time, federal reports indicate. One Border Patrol  intelligence report says terrorist threats potentially come from “foreign violent extremists to exploit established alien smuggling routes and networks for the purpose of evading detection en route to the United States.”

Other threats include drug smuggling from Canada into the U.S., connected to “criminal groups with known ties to or hired by Mexican drug trafficking organizations” and human smuggling. In the last few years, human smuggling attempts and apprehensions have significantly increased, The Center Square has reported.

The Center Square first began reporting on northern border national security threats several years ago. Since then, apprehensions of illegal border crossers in the first six months of fiscal 2024 were the highest on record. In the busiest sector of Swanton, Border Patrol agents recently apprehended more people in one week than they did in all of fiscal 2021.

Last month, they apprehended more than 1,400 illegal border crossers, more than they did in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 combined, Swanton Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Robert Garcia just announced, saying it was “another record-breaking milestone in northern border history.”

This is after they apprehended more than 6,700 in fiscal 2023, more than the apprehensions of the previous 11 years combined, The Center Square first reported.

The U.S.-Canada border is the longest international border in the world of 5,525 miles. Unlike the U.S.-Mexico border, there are no border walls or similar barriers along the U.S.-Canada border. Through DHS, CBP officers are tasked with border security at ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports of entry along 4,000 miles. The U.S. Coast Guard, working with CBP’s Air and Maritime Operations, covers maritime security.

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Trudeau’s pro-transgender regime is a get-out-of-jail-free card for Canada’s most violent criminals

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Canada’s most dangerous criminals are being sent to women’s prisons simply by identifying as such. This can only happen because the country is run by people like Justin Trudeau, who believes gender ideology with every fibre of his being.

You’ve probably heard plenty from Justin Trudeau and his progressive clones about conservative premiers “attacking” and “targeting” the so-called “LGBT community” for legislation protecting children from sex change surgeries. But you won’t hear a word about the victims of LGBT ideology – and you won’t hear a thing about the growing list of insanities inflicted on Canada by the policies they have passed and supported. 

Consider the case of Adam Laboucan, who as a teenager brutally raped a 3-month-old infant and allegedly drowned a toddler – he was convicted only of the violent pedophilic assault, because he was less than 12 years old when he drowned the 3-year-old boy, and under Canadian law you must be at least 12 to be prosecuted. 

Laboucan’s case – which LifeSiteNews reported on last year – was so disturbing that he became Canada’s “youngest designated dangerous offender.”  

Now, according to The Canadian Press, Laboucan is “seeking escorted leave from prison to attend Indigenous cultural ceremonies in Vancouver.” You see, Adam Laboucan has changed his name. He is now known as Tara Desousa, and the CP obediently refers to him by his preferred pronouns, leading to ludicrous sentences such as this one: 

Desousa, then named Adam Laboucan, was 15 years old in 1997 when she sexually assaulted an infant she was babysitting in Quesnel, B.C. The baby required surgery to repair the injuries.

Laboucan, of course, was not a woman when he attacked the infant and drowned the child. He is not a woman now, despite having obtained sex change surgeries since then (he is 43). He is considered so dangerous that B.C. Supreme Court Judge Victor Curtis imposed an indefinite sentence on him in 1999 because there was, in the view of the court, no foreseeable “time span in which Adam Laboucan may be cured.” The B.C. Court of Appeal affirmed the dangerous offender designation in 2002. 

They did so for good reason. Expert psychiatrists stated that Laboucan exhibited everything from “transsexual to pedophilic tendencies.” He was given to self-mutilation and even self-cannibalism. He was promiscuous and volatile, threatening to kill a female guard and behaving so erratically that a 2010 parole review again affirmed his dangerous offender designation due to his problems with “gender identity, impulsive behavior, violence and sexual deviance.” But in 2018, he began to identify as a woman. As LifeSiteNews reported shortly thereafter:  

In a 2021 brief to members of the House of Commons, incarcerated women’s rights advocate Heather Mason told a House Committee that numerous women prisoners had been subject to sexual harassment by males who call themselves females who are living in female prisons. Mason made special mention of Laboucan (Desousa) stating: “One of these women reported that while in the mother-child program, two transgender individuals with convictions for pedophilia, Madilyn Harks and Tara Desousa, would loiter near her and her child, making sexist and inappropriate antagonizing comments.” The person who calls himself Madilyn but was named Matthew has been labelled a serial pedophile with an “all-encompassing preoccupation in sexually abusing young girls.”

Note well: the reason one of Canada’s most dangerous criminals, a man with violent pedophilic impulses and a history of profound mental disturbance, can get sent to a women’s prison is because our country is run by people like Trudeau, who believes gender ideology with every fibre of his being. 

Laboucan’s most recent attempt at parole – in June 2024– was denied, with the Parole Board of Canada stating that that the victim of Laboucan’s assault and the family “have suffered pain, anxiety and anguish and long-term emotional impacts resulting from your offending. Each time you come up for parole, they are haunted by your offending and the damage you inflicted on their defenceless son/grandson.” 

Of course, the government now expects you to believe that these crimes were committed by a woman – and the board did say that “escorted temporary absences” were “the next logical step in reintegration and gradual release,” despite the fact that he is “an undue risk to society.”

Laboucan’s Vancouver-based lawyer, Caroline North, declined to comment on the Federal Court application when asked by the Canadian Press. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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Crime

Despite recent bail reform flip-flops, Canada is still more dangerous than we’d prefer

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The Audit

 David Clinton

Our Criminal Justice System Is Changing

58 percent of individuals sentenced to community supervision had at least one prior conviction for a violent offence. 68 percent of those given custodial sentences were similarly repeat offenders. In fact, 59 percent of offenders serving custodial sentences had previously been convicted at least 10 times.

Back in 2019, the federal Liberals passed Bill C-75, “An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and other Acts”. Among other things, the law established a Principle of Restraint that required courts to minimize unnecessary pre-trial detention. This has been characterized as a form of “catch and release” that sacrifices public safety in general, and victims’ rights in particular on the altar of social justice.

I’m no lawyer, but I can’t see how the legislation’s actual language supports that interpretation. In fact, as we can see from the government’s official overview of the law, courts must still give serious consideration to public safety:

The amendments…legislate a “principle of restraint” for police and courts to ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention, that bail conditions are reasonable, relevant to the offence and necessary to ensure public safety, and that sureties are imposed only when less onerous forms of release are inadequate.

So unlike in some U.S. jurisdictions, Canadian courts are still able use their discretion to restrict an accused’s freedom. That’s not to say everyone’s always happy with how Canadian judges choose to use such discretion, but judicial outcomes appear to lie in their hands, rather than with legislation.

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Arguably, C-75 did come with a “soft-on-crime” tone (in particular as the law relates to certain minority communities). But even that was mostly reversed by 2023’s Bill C-48, which introduced reverse onus for repeat offenders and required judges to explicitly consider the safety of the community (whatever that means).

Nevertheless, the system is clearly far from perfect. Besides the occasional high-profile news reports about offenders committing new crimes while awaiting trials for previous offences, the population-level data suggests that our streets are not nearly as safe as they should be.

As far as I can tell, Statistics Canada doesn’t publish numbers on repeat offences committed by offenders free while waiting for trial. But I believe we can get at least part of the way there using two related data points:

  • Conviction rates
  • Repeat offender rates

Between 2019 and 2023, conviction rates across Canada on homicide charges for adults averaged 42 percent, while similar charges against youth offenders resulted in convictions in 65 percent of cases. That means we can safely assume that a significant proportion of accused offenders were, in fact, criminally violent even before reaching trial.

We can use different Statistics Canada data to understand how likely it is that those accused offenders will re-offend while on pre-trial release:

58 percent of individuals sentenced to community supervision (through either conditional sentences or probation) had at least one prior conviction for a violent offence. 68 percent of those given custodial sentences were similarly repeat offenders. In fact, 59 percent of offenders serving custodial sentences had previously been convicted at least 10 times.

Also, in the three years following a term of community supervision, 15.6 percent of offenders were convicted for new violent crimes. For offenders coming out of custodial sentences, that rate was 30.2 percent.

In other words:

  • Many – if not most – people charged with serious crimes turn out to be guilty
  • It’s relatively rare for violent criminals to offend just once.

Together, those two conclusions suggest that public safety would be best served by immediately incarcerating all people charged with violent offences and keeping them “inside” either until they’re declared innocent or their sentences end. That, however, would be impossible. For one thing, we just don’t have space in our prisons to handle the load (or the money to fund it). And it would also often trample on the legitimate civil rights of accused individuals.

This is a serious problem without any obvious pull-the-trigger-and-you’re-done solutions. But here are some possible considerations:

  • Implement improved risk assessment and predictive analytics tools to evaluate the likelihood of re-offending.
  • Improve the reliability of non-custodial measures such as electronic monitoring and house arrest that incorporate real-time tracking and immediate intervention capabilities
  • Improve parole and probation systems to ensure effective monitoring and support for offenders released into the community. (Warning: expensive!)
  • Optimize data analytics to identify trends, allocate resources efficiently, and measure the effectiveness of various interventions.

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