HOULTON, Maine — Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents captured two Romanian juveniles in the northern Maine forest after they illegally entered the U.S. from Canada, according to the agency.
The case drew attention to a recent mystery along the Maine section of the Canadian border: of all the people that Houlton Sector agents have encountered illegally crossing into the state in recent years, some of the largest numbers have come from Romania.
While Romanians were involved in less than 1 percent of the agency’s encounters across the whole nation last year, they have made up a growing share of encounters by the Houlton Sector, which covers the Maine section of the northern border.
In total, the number of Romanians caught attempting to illegally cross over Maine’s international border was 13 out of 303 total encounters in the 2023 fiscal year (4 percent), which starts in October, according to CBP data. That number then rose to 40 out of 344 total encounters last fiscal year (12 percent), and it stands at nine out of 70 total encounters so far this fiscal year (13 percent).
While Houlton Sector border patrol agents have recently encountered foreign nationals from more than a dozen other countries, the only ones who made up a slightly greater share than Romanians last year were Mexicans, who account for the largest overall number of illegal U.S. border crossings.
But there’s no clear explanation why people from the Eastern European nation have been coming in such relatively high numbers over Maine’s specific section of the border.
U.S. and Canadian border protection officials said it can be incredibly hard to identify the reason for year-to-year changes in the pace of entries by people from different nations.
“The Canada Border Services Agency cannot speculate on why a certain percentage of Romanians try to enter illegally both in Canada and the United States,” said Karine Martel, spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency.
In the recent case of two Romanian youths who were caught entering the border illegally, a citizen tip led agents from the Fort Fairfield Border Patrol Station to search the area around Caswell with a small unmanned aerial system, according to Ryan Brissette, a CBP spokesperson.
“The operator was able to locate two subjects moving through the forest away from the border. He was able to guide another agent to the subjects’ location,” Brissette said, adding that once processing was complete, the juveniles were turned over to Enforcement and Removal Operations.
According to a Romanian news publication, PressONE, Houlton has become a transit point for Romanians trying to access family in New York and Washington, D.C. The publication’s reporter, Octavian Coman, traveled to Houlton two years ago to interview border patrol agents in the small Aroostook County town.
Because of its close proximity to Interstate 95 and the Trans-Canada Highway, crossing the border near Houlton can make it easier to travel to larger cities undetected, CBP said at the time.
Houlton Sector officials have previously pointed to frequently dangerous human smuggling operations as one reason that Romanians are crossing in the area. Smugglers often extort thousands of dollars from people trying to illegally enter the U.S. under inhumane conditions. They may lock children in trunks and lead unprepared and inappropriately dressed people — often whole families — through dense forests and frigid conditions.
“The international border between our province and Maine is composed of farm fields, dense forestry and bodies of water,” said Cpl. Hans J. Ouellette, a spokesperson for the New Brunswick Royal Canadian Mounted Police, on Thursday. “When people attempt to cross the border they risk getting lost in the wilderness, and being exposed to inclement weather which can lead to serious injury or death.”
Ouellette was unable to comment on why there has been an increase in the number of Romanians crossing from Canada through Maine.
Just this week, although not from Romania, four people from India and one from Algeria tried to cross northern Maine’s rugged terrain illegally. The foreign nationals, captured by Van Buren agents, were wearing tennis shoes and lightweight coats, according to CBP.
In one encounter from November 2023, 20 Romanians in four cars illegally crossed the U.S.-Canada border on Lincoln Road in Hodgdon. Most of the people taken into custody — 10 adults and 10 children — were family members, although two appeared in the Transnational Criminal Organized Crime database and were processed for expedited removal proceedings, Brissette said at the time.
If anything, illegal crossings by Romanians appear to be falling across the whole U.S., according to experts at the Migration Policy Institute, an independent, nonpartisan think tank focused on immigration policies.
“Since joining the EU in 2007, Romanians have been able to freely live and work across EU countries, making western Europe a far more attractive destination for Romanians seeking to improve their lives and livelihoods than would expensive and unauthorized entry into the U.S.,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the institute.
Additionally, the U.S. government recently announced that, as of March, Romania will join the Visa Waiver Program, meaning that Romanian travelers can enter the U.S. without first needing to get a visa, she said.
That means that if they were intent on migrating to the country illegally, they could theoretically just overstay their visa, rather than deal with a treacherous crossing of a land border.
The recent increase in the numbers of encounters of Romanians at this section of the border may indicate the opening of a new, albeit small, smuggling market, according to Mittelstadt.
“Some person or entity is now facilitating travel and making it easier for people who have the money to pay for a smuggler,” Mittelstadt said. “But again, with conditions so favorable for Romanians to access other EU countries, it seems unlikely that this represents the start of a significant new pattern of movement.”