Increased illegal crossings transform quiet New York border towns

The number of migrants entering northern New York, crossing border illegally through Canada, has remained at record highs

By Chris Hippensteel, Investigative Reporter, Times Union

CHATEAUGAY — Danny Cowan slowed his off-road vehicle to a crawl as he spotted the abandoned backpack. It lay half hidden in the brush, just beside the track that separated the towering cornstalks — Cowan’s property — from the dense treeline, which demarcates the international border between New York and Canada. 
He grabbed a stick from the vehicle’s bed and used it to slide the bag’s zipper open. Inside was a change of clothes, a quart-sized bottle of water and a bag of trash. The typical remains of an illegal crossing. 

“I’ll send it into the intel unit later,” Cowan said, snapping pictures on his phone to send to the Border Patrol. “Why you would drop this here is beyond me.”

Cowan isn’t surprised, though. Findings like these — clothes, bags or trash abandoned in fields or backyards — have become common lately, as this stretch of northern New York has become a major route for illicit southbound migration into the United States.

Illegal crossings along the 5,250-mile U.S.-Canada border represent a fraction of those that occur along the border with Mexico. But that fraction is growing, as more migrants look northward to what they see as a relatively safer crossing into the United States from Canada. 

This year, the numbers of illegal crossings along the northern border have remained as high as they’ve ever been, even as crossings along the southern border have dropped precipitously. 

Northern New York, due to its proximity to the Canadian cities of Montreal and Toronto, remains the epicenter of that southbound surge. In August, the most recent month for which data is available, Border Patrol reported 19,000 migrant encounters along the U.S.-Canada border. Of those, 9,200 — nearly half — entered through New York. 

And a not-insignificant number of that group passed through the particular stretch of North Country backwoods Danny Cowan and his family call home. 

Cowan reports as many of them as he can, he said, sharing the locations of suspected crossings directly with Border Patrol agents, sometimes using a hunting app. One acquaintance suggested, half-jokingly, that Cowan has intercepted more border crossings than the Border Patrol itself.

“Fifty out of my 53 years, I’ve lived on this property,” Cowan said. “And I’ve never seen anything like it’s been the last two years.”

Residents, emergency services overwhelmed

The woman appeared on Peggy Robare’s front porch at dawn, a backpack slung over one shoulder, a child on the other. Another child, holding what looked like a green stuffed animal, milled around at her feet. 

“She was asking me for something, kind of pleading,” Robare said. “But there was clearly a, you know, a language barrier, so I couldn’t understand what she wanted.”

Robare eventually managed to direct the group down the road, in the direction of a nearby border station. 

Scenes like that one have become commonplace for Robare and her neighbors. They live on a quiet road running just below the border, and their homes might be the first buildings migrants see upon crossing into the United States.

Previously, migrants largely tried to avoid apprehension, seeking to connect with pickup cars and get out of the area as fast as possible. Now, more border crossers are turning themselves in at the first available opportunity, several residents said, either by calling authorities themselves or approaching residents they hope will connect them with emergency services.

One of the people who fields those calls is Todd Gumlaw, fire chief for the town of Mooers. 

“At times, these individuals coming across have told us that they were told when we get across the border into the United States, call 911, and somebody will come pick us up,” Gumlaw said.

The shift might reflect a change in the tactics of the smugglers that shuttle migrants to the border and arrange for their pickup on the other side. But it’s also placed a strain on local first responders, said Gumlaw and Churubusco fire Chief Greg Poupore. 

Clinton County Sheriff David Favro argued the same while speaking to Congress last year.

Both Gumlaw and Poupore — whose volunteer-run departments cover vast tracts of North County land — recalled late-night runs to search for migrants reported missing, or expeditions to assist those stranded deep in the woods. 

“One of the first calls that we went on, on a rescue, it was 9 degrees out with 3 feet of snow in the woods. We had two individuals in the swamp barefoot,” Gumlaw said. He later heard one of the migrants had to have multiple toes amputated due to frostbite.

Other migrants — especially those who’ve tried to traverse the border during the brutal North County winter — haven’t survived the trek. 

In March, Border Patrol agents discovered the bodies of two Senegalese men who appeared to have frozen to death near Gumlaw’s town of Mooers. 

And in Champlain, a cross-shaped memorial stands in honor of Ana Karen Vasquez-Flores, whose body was found in the Great Chazy River after she went missing during a border crossing. It was made by an Arizona-based artist who has long marked locations on the U.S.-Mexico border where migrants have died in the journey across the desert. 

“We sat down with Border Patrol,” Gumlaw said, recalling a recent meeting. “And one of the gentlemen told us that the numbers that we’re seeing up here are greater than some of the southern border towns.”

‘A different mindset’

The engine of Cowan’s side-by-side vehicle whined as it churned through deep mud and chest-high grass, bouncing along an east-west track barely wide enough to fit it.

On the northern side, the tree line of the Canadian border beat against his windshield. To the south sprawled his property — 230-plus acres of fields, forest and marshland scattered with cabins and hunting blinds, and monitored by a network of Border Patrol surveillance technology. 

Cowan occasionally stopped to point out evidence of former crossings; places where the brush was beaten down by vehicle tires or foot traffic. Bright red bands — trail blazes — tied onto branches by guides. A muddy trail, carved by a vehicle much like his own, that Cowan said extended to a housing development on the Canadian side. 

“You don’t know what you’re gonna run into, when you come back here,” he said. 

For much of his life, Cowan said, this border was relatively quiet. But that tranquility ended a few years ago, when the end of a pandemic and overlapping geopolitical crises converged to make this section of the northern border — and his land — a new chokepoint for migrants entering the United States. 

Since then it’s become a normal occurrence for him to spot migrants crossing beneath his tree stand while hunting, or to pass them on the nearby roads or trails. 

One chaotic night a few months earlier, agents apprehended three separate groups passing through the area within the span of a few hours. A picture on his phone captured the outcome of one of the crossings that night — a car, crashed head-first into a creek bed, after its driver apparently failed to spot a missing bridge.

In one tense, late-night encounter at the beginning of the uptick, Cowan said he held a man he described as an escaped smuggler at gunpoint in the snow, after the man turned up in his backyard.

Now, Cowan kept two guns on him as he drove through his property — a handgun and a shotgun, both stored within reach. 

Other border residents echoed Cowan’s sentiment. Several who spoke to the Times Union expressed some measure of sympathy toward the migrants, who they recognize are just passing through the area on their way south. Often, they’re heading to New York City, or following job leads or seeking to find their relatives elsewhere in the United States.

But residents also fear that it only takes one exception for something to go horribly wrong.

Worried about who or what they’ll find in the woods, several said they are more cautious or carry weapons when exploring their properties. Those who didn’t own guns before now do, or plan to — including some of Cowan’s family members, he said.

But it’s not just the fear of violent encounters that have, so far, largely not manifested. Residents are frustrated with the role they’ve had to adopt, acting as informal border surveillance and 911 dispatchers.

They’re dismayed with the impact the traffic has had on their land — the clothes and trash left in their fields, the impact on the animals they hunt, their inability to allow their children to go out and explore, no longer certain about who they might run into in the woods.

“A lot of people that live along the border keep everything under lock and key now,” Gumlaw said. Before, “they never did.” 

Waiting on government action

Amid the increased attention on their long-neglected border, lawmakers in both the United States and Canada have begun to take steps to stem the rise of illegal crossings. 

In June, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to strengthen enforcement along the northern border. Similar legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives. 

And the administration of President Joe Biden has moved to expedite the processing of asylum claims for migrants entering from Canada, mirroring changes already made at the U.S.-Mexico border, CBS News first reported. 

Canadian authorities have taken action as well, strengthening visa requirements for Mexican nationals traveling to the country, who for a time drove the increase in crossings. 

The share of Mexican nationals apprehended along the northern border has dropped since then, federal data shows. But migrants from other nations, particularly India, now make up a much greater share of those making the journey, according to reports by NPR and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

For Cowan and other border residents, however, the actions taken in Ottawa and Washington, D.C., have translated to little improvement. Between the two, however, Cowan believes the chief responsibility for addressing the crisis lies to the north.

“I think for anything to change in the United States, it’s got to change in Canada,” he said.

An evolving border

As his truck crested a hill, Peggy Robare’s son Hunter could see for miles across the Canadian border, a broad expanse of green under the setting sun.
The younger Robare — who lives in the hamlet Churubusco, just east of Chateaugay — drives this route almost daily, as he goes to work on the wind turbines that tower over this North Country landscape. 

“I see them every morning, because I take this way to work,” he said, speaking of the migrants he passes. “I’ve got videos on the way to work, groups of 10, groups of six, groups of two.”

Robare pulled the truck into the field where he regularly hunts, right up against the Canadian border. 

Despite the psychological shift that has occurred along the frontier in the past several years, little has been physically altered. In most places, the only barrier to crossing remains the terrain. But here, in this isolated field, that too has begun to change.

After dismounting from his truck, Robare climbed onto a row of concrete barricades, installed in the last few weeks by Border Patrol to block frequent vehicle incursions. 

Usually, Robare said he can spot clothes or other items dropped by migrants passing through scattered across this patch of land. But today he was surprised to find his field empty. 

The only sign of a recent crossing was on the side of his Canadian neighbor: a mangled piece of a car, torn off in a botched crossing, lay just beyond the barricades.