Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called Thursday for the United States to build a wall on its border with Canada.
Ramaswamy made the proposal in response to Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s establishment of a Northern Border Alliance Task Force to address the ten-year record increase in illegal apprehensions along the Canadian border in the past year.
“It’s not ‘Build-the-Wall’ anymore,” Ramaswamy tweeted Thursday. “It’s Build *Both* Walls. I visited the Northern & Southern Borders this month. This isn’t a technical challenge, the country that put a man on the moon can fix this. It’s a question of political will.”
It’s not “Build-the-Wall” anymore.
It’s Build *Both* Walls.
I visited the Northern & Southern Borders this month. This isn’t a technical challenge, the country that put a man on the moon can fix this. It’s a question of political will. https://t.co/Xg2UXuU65T
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) October 19, 2023
Ramaswamy visited the northern border in early October, where he posted a TikTok showing the lack of barriers to illegal crossings. ‘The next frontier of the border crisis will be in the *North*,” he captioned the video. He has previously called for the completion of a southern border wall and for the militarization of that border.
Sununu’s Northern Border Alliance Task Force is designed to conduct patrols along the northern border to tackle crime, gather intelligence and respond to threats, according to NBC Boston. Officials from the border’s Swanton Sector, which covers the Canadian border with Vermont and parts of New Hampshire and New York, have witnessed an 846 percent increase in encounters and apprehensions on the Canadian border from Oct. 1, 2022 to Jan. 31, 2023 in comparison to the same period in the 2022 fiscal year, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Sununu has accused President Joe Biden and the federal government of failing to address the surge in illegal crossings along the northern border.
“The Federal Government refuses to take action on our Northern Border,” Sununu said while announcing the task force, according to NBC Boston. “They cut funding, limited our resources, and have thrown their hands up. Without adequate federal support, the state is stepping up.”
New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said the task force will increase patrol personnel and add ten thousand patrol hours near the northern border through June 30, 2025, the outlet reported.
Illegal migrant apprehensions have also surged to record numbers at the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden assumed office in Jan. 2021. CBP officials have encountered over 2.2 million illegal migrants between Oct. 1, 2022, and the end of Sept. 2023, on track to potentially surpass the FY2022 total of 2.38 million, according to CBP data.
For the 2020 fiscal year, former President Donald Trump’s final year in office, the total was just 458,000 migrants, according to CBP.