The Highgate Springs border crossing with Canada on Sept. 1, 2021. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerThe Quebec government is bolstering its law enforcement presence along the province’s border with Vermont, New Hampshire and New York — a response, one top official said, to calls by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to curb the number of people crossing illegally into the U.S. from Canada. François Bonnardel, Quebec’s public security minister, told Canadian news outlets at a press conference this week that the move would show the incoming Trump administration “that we’re ready, just in case.” Bonnardel called on Canada’s federal government to direct additional resources to Quebec’s border, as well. The security minister also said that while illegal crossings in the reverse direction, from the U.S. into Canada, have not been a recent concern for Quebec officials, “we have to be prepared for the new administration after the (20th) of January — and see, after that, what will happen.”In the meantime, Bonnardel said Quebec was adding six investigators from its regional police force — the Sûreté du Québec — to a joint task force with U.S. immigration officials that investigates cross-border crime, CBC/Radio-Canada reported. And he wrote on X that another 300 regional police officers were on hand to be deployed to the border “in the event of a significant flow of migrants from the United States.”Right now, Bonnardel wrote on X, there are about 800 provincial officers patrolling the border along the Swanton Sector, which is a U.S. Border Patrol jurisdiction that includes Vermont, New Hampshire and parts of New York State. Data from U.S. officials shows that the Swanton Sector has accounted for the vast majority — about 80% — of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the entire Canadian border over the most recent full federal fiscal year, which started in October 2023 and ended in September 2024.Canada needs to focus its border security resources on the region accordingly, Bonnardel told reporters on Tuesday, according to The Canadian Press. “We have to put a minimum of 80 per cent of the possible or future effort of the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency in this sector to show the Americans there is a decline (in illegal crossings) that will continue in the months to come,” he said. The RCMP, short for Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is responsible for policing the country’s border in between official ports of entry, similar to U.S. Border Patrol.The minister’s comments come as he, and other Canadian leaders, have angled to respond to threats Trump first made last fall to impose sweeping tariffs on all U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico. The president-elect has tied the notion to what he describes as those countries’ inadequate efforts to stop illegal border crossings and fentanyl smuggling into the U.S.“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, the social media site he owns, in November. “We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”Last month, the Canadian federal government announced part of what appears to be its answer — a $1.3 billion plan to combat fentanyl trafficking and increase surveillance along the U.S. border, including with the use of helicopters, drones and mobile surveillance towers, according to CBC/Radio-Canada. Bonnardel said this week that the flow of fentanyl is not currently a concern at the U.S.-Quebec border, the outlet reported. READ MORE Quebec’s ramp-up also comes as U.S. officials have made similar moves in and around Vermont. U.S. Border Patrol assigned more agents to the Swanton Sector last year from other parts of the country in response to the high number of migrant apprehensions. And U.S. Customs and Border Protection — the agency that oversees the border patrol — has built at least three surveillance towers along the border in Vermont and New York in recent years, with more likely to be built soon, VTDigger reported last month.Read the story on VTDigger here: Quebec government upping border security with Trump set to take office.