Bondi says human smuggling across the border with Canada is getting worse

TAMPA — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday human smuggling across the border with Canada is getting worse — and that traffickers are looking north following the Trump administration’s crackdown at the border with Mexico.

“The northern border, it always has been, but it’s gotten much worse, much more prevalent because … it’s a multibillion-dollar business, the smuggling of drugs, guns and humans,” Bondi said during a news conference in Tampa, Fla.

Bondi announced that Joint Task Force Alpha — a multiagency effort to stop human smuggling — has been expanded to cover the Canada-U.S. border and the United States’ maritime borders.

Bondi’s comments come a week after she met with Justice Minister Sean Fraser, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree and “fentanyl czar” Kevin Brosseau in Washington to talk about the shared border — part of Ottawa’s efforts to find an off-ramp from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

A readout from the Aug. 27 meeting said Canadian officials cited Canada’s ongoing efforts to keep communities safe “on both sides of our shared border in the fight against fentanyl and transnational criminal organizations, to strengthen the criminal justice system and border security.”

Trump slapped Canada with economywide tariffs in March after declaring an emergency at America’s northern border. He boosted those duties to 35 per cent in August, citing border security and Ottawa’s retaliatory tariffs as justification.

Those tariffs do not apply to goods compliant with origin rules under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade.

Ottawa has made multiple investments to boost border security — including additional drones, officers and helicopters — and Prime Minister Mark Carney introduced sweeping border legislation in June.

The Canada Border Services Agency said in an email Thursday that it had opened 70 cases linked to human smuggling this year as of Aug. 12, with eight charges in six cases resulting in convictions.

It said it opened 83 such cases in 2024 and 57 a year earlier.

“We have a strong border, and we are making it stronger,” the agency said, pointing to the more than $355 million that was allocated to it as part of the federal government’s border plan.

The RCMP has not yet provided a response to Bondi’s comments.

U.S. government data shows the flow of people and drugs across the Canada-U.S. border is a fraction of the volumes seen at the southern border.

But American politicians from border states and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have pointed to instances of human smuggling across the Canada-U.S. border in recent years — some of which ended in death.

Bondi cited the case of four members of a family from India who were killed by cold temperatures while trying to walk across the Canada-U.S. border in 2022. Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife Vaishaliben Patel, 37, their 11-year-old daughter Vihangi and their three-year-old son Dharmik were found in a field in Manitoba, metres from the U.S. border.

Bondi said law enforcement in parts of Vermont and New York have seen “unprecedented traffic from illegal aliens.”

“Law enforcement officers operating in these areas encountered aliens from 97 different countries, including China, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and Yemen,” she said.

The news conference highlighted the indictment of a Michigan woman who smuggled people, including children, from Central America into the United States across the border with Canada last year.

The indictment says that from February to November, Norma Linda Lozano, 53, was part of a smuggling organization that brought people from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador across the Canada-U.S. border.

It alleges she collaborated with co-conspirators in Canada to instruct the migrants to cross the border on foot. The indictment alleges Lozano would pick them up once they were in the U.S.

Lozano was arrested on Tuesday.

Michael Drescher, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Vermont, said smugglers exploit desperate people while putting them in dangerous situations.

“On the northern border, such illegal crossings frequently involve trekking through forests and swamps, in inhospitable and dangerous circumstances,” Drescher said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 4, 2025.

Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press