America's Porous Northern Border Has Brought a Wave of Crime to North Dakota

The border battle in Congress went on the road Wednesday, traveling to Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement held a hearing and got an earful from local officials about the danger on our border with Canada.

Law enforcement officials from North Dakota said they're simply out-manned by the influx of illegals, crime, and drugs. 

"This is a national security issue, and a national drug trafficking, and an inability to protect our country and our citizens issue," said Cass County Sheriff Jesse Jahner, who labels the northern border as a situation out of control. 

Jahner, whose Cass County includes the city of Fargo, blames both of America's porous borders for bringing the deadly fentanyl scourge to his state. 

"North Dakota is a ripe area for narcotics trafficking because of the increase in prices that narcotics traffickers can make by selling their products in North Dakota," he said. 

'Definitely Overlooked': Sharp Increase in Number of Migrants Illegally Crossing US Northern Border

Sheriff Roger Hutchinson from Renville County on the Canadian border described a criminal landscape far worse than his department can handle.

"Our North Dakota sheriffs have had to deal with border-related dead bodies, high-speed pursuits, responding to numerous border incursions, property damage to croplands, humanitarian rescues in extreme conditions, illegal substances, counterfeit goods, and subjects with warrants," Hutchinson told the subcommittee.

North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said federal border agents are great, but there aren't enough of them, and illegal entries attempted on his state's border have skyrocketed.

Wrigley said, "Border encounters for the North Dakota sector of the border have escalated at a dramatic rate, calling the integrity of the northern border into serious question. There were 548 such entries attempted and refused in 2021. Then 2,100 in fiscal year 2022 and an explosive 4,444 in fiscal year 2023. Our communities are in danger."

And as a demonstration of how politicized this issue has become in Washington, no Democrat members of the subcommittee attended the hearing.