By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

Tampa, Florida (CNN) — As the federal government continues its crackdown on illegal immigration, the Justice Department announced Thursday that it would surge resources to the US-Canada border to combat an uptick in human smuggling operations in the north.

The surge will include sending agents from the joint DOJ and Department of Homeland Security “Task Force Alpha” to Canada’s border with both New York and Vermont, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press conference in Tampa, Florida.

“If you smuggle human beings, you will be found, you will be prosecuted, and you will be brought to justice,” Bondi said. “It doesn’t matter where you are.”

Task Force Alpha was charged in 2021 by the Biden Justice Department with combatting human smuggling and trafficking groups from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. It was expanded in 2024 to also include Colombia and Panama.

Among those increasing their efforts in New York and Vermont are the same cartels operating along the southern border that the Trump administration designated as foreign terrorist organizations, Bondi said.

While the cartels have always been operating on the northern border, “it’s gotten much worse, much more prevalent,” the attorney general said. CBP data reflects an increase in attempts over the summer.

“It’s a multibillion dollar business, the smuggling of drugs, guns and humans,” she added, “so they’re not going to quit once we secured our southern border.”

The Trump administration has made a crackdown on illegal immigration a cornerstone of its policy agenda, and while much of that effort has focused on the southern border, the president issued an executive order declaring a national emergency over drug and human trafficking across the US-Canada border. He slammed the country, saying it had failed to stop criminal networks involved in trafficking from entering the US.

Bondi touted that Task Force Alpha has brought charges against 56 defendants for their alleged involvement in various smuggling operations since Trump took office. DOJ data shows that between June 2021, when the task force began, and the end of 2024, it had won nearly 300 convictions in court.

Data from the US Customs and Border Protection show an increase in trafficking efforts across Canada’s border with New York and Vermont — the two states in which the DOJ is expanding the task force to cover — since 2023.

A senior department official told CNN that the individuals running the smuggling operations are largely from South and Central America — not Canada — and are flying north. The shift is in part given “progress that’s been made on dismantling some of the organizations at the southern border and shutting off some of their routes to the US,” the official said.

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