On America's northern border, the threats are not unidirectional
CBC News gets behind-the-scenes look at U.S. Customs and Border Protection as it patrols in and around Detroit
Clad in a black bulletproof vest, a gun clasped to his hip, Tim Thayer gently pushes down the throttles of four 350-horsepower engines — and the 18,000-pound U.S. Customs and Border Protection boat jumps to life on the Detroit River.
Thayer is a marine interdiction agent, part of a team that patrols the waterways that make up the Canada-U.S. border in this part of the country.
He's assigned to the Detroit sector, an area that encompasses Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The border with Canada here is entirely water — all 1,388 kilometres of it — which poses a unique challenge.
A peculiar quirk in the geography of the two countries is that Windsor, Ont., lies south of Detroit, separated by the river and connected by two bridges and a tunnel, with some seven million people crossing back and forth here alone annually.
On a warm Wednesday afternoon, Thayer scans south, looking toward the Windsor shoreline, his eyes searching for anything out of the ordinary.
"When we do our enforcement patrols out here on the Detroit River, what we're seeing is both people, narcotics and guns going back and forth between the U.S. and Canada," he said.
During the Prohibition era of the 1920s and '30s, the Windsor-Detroit corridor was the main route smugglers used to bring alcohol into the U.S. illegally from Canada.
While illegal activity on the Detroit River is perhaps not nearly as bustling today, the sheer number of recreational boaters who are frequently out presents a challenge for law enforcement.
WATCH | Trump's fentanyl claims aren't materializing at this Canada-U.S. crossing:"We saw how many boats today? And every boat could be a smuggler unless we stop every single boat," asked Kris Grogan, chief of external communications at CBP's air and marine operations.
"You have to use intelligence and partnerships to be able to secure this area up here."
Trump's claims aren't materializing
Just days into his second term in 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Canada of failing to prevent drugs, especially fentanyl and human traffickers, from entering the U.S., using the flow of drugs as justification to declare a national emergency and slapping 25 per cent tariffs on an array of Canadian goods under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977.
In February of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down those tariffs.
And while Trump has painted a picture of a porous and dangerous border, the reality is much more complicated.
- Republicans portray Canadian border as a threat, but U.S. statistics tell a different story
- Canada has 'nasty leadership,' says Trump during Las Vegas speech
In 2025, U.S. border officials in the Detroit sector seized more than 4,200 kilograms of illegal drugs, including nearly 15 kilograms of fentanyl, according to statistics provided by CBP. But the statistics don't reveal the direction the drugs were travelling.
"It's really not that big of a problem for inbound," said Lavarah Miller, a CBP watch commander on duty when CBC News toured a brand new American port of entry facility at the newly opened Gordie Howe International Bridge.
"A lot of the stuff that we actually get, we get a lot of it going out."
And guns, too, are travelling north, recent statistics show.
In 2024, 87 per cent of the guns recovered in crimes in Ontario were traced back to the U.S, according to figures compiled by Ontario Provincial Police. In Toronto, police say 88 per cent of guns recovered were illegally smuggled into the country.
"Firearms, for sure. But also, the United States is the middle ground for drugs coming up into our country from Mexico and South America," said Kelly Sundberg, a professor of criminology at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
While the flow of drugs and weapons between the two countries is primarily northward, Sundberg said, Canada still poses a threat to the U.S. — just not the one Trump continues to accuse Canada of.
"There is virtually no fentanyl getting smuggled into the United States, especially when you compare it to what's coming in from Mexico," he said. "Nevertheless Canada does have some serious issues with staffing [at our border] — we don't have enough officers.
"The officers we do have need to be better educated, better trained, better selected, better equipped. There needs to be a significant investment in the human side of our border security."
A tale of 2 borders
Canada's fentanyl czar — a role created in the early days of the trade war to try and assuage Trump's concerns about the northern border — has also pushed back against suggestions that Canada poses a major drug-trafficking threat.
In an interview with CBC's The House in June, Kevin Brosseau pointed to new data from CBP that shows less than half a kilogram of fentanyl was seized at the Canada-U.S. border in May, compared to 358 kilograms at the Mexico-U.S. border.
The total amount of fentanyl seized by U.S. officials so far this year at the Canadian border is approximately three kilograms. At the Mexican border, it's approximately 3,221 kilograms.
- U.S. claims about higher drug trafficking from Canada don't match the data: fentanyl czar
- As Trump complains about Canada, data shows most crime guns seized in GTA come from U.S.
Despite ongoing political tensions between Washington and Ottawa, the U.S. border agents who spoke with CBC News over our two-day tour insisted the working relationship with their Canadian counterparts has remained unchanged over the last 18 months.
"Locally, we still have great partnerships with those agencies right across the water," said Tim Balkus, the patrol agent in charge of the Detroit sector.
Meanwhile, Thayer nods his head as an RCMP boat flies past, the Gordie Howe bridge looming large in the distance — a symbol of both how strong and strained the bond between the two countries is today.