Cartels and other crime groups are operating along the Canada-U.S. border: Expert
The increasing power of transnational organized crime along the Canada-U.S. border means cross-border co-operation among law enforcement is more important than ever, B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said Friday.
Farnworth attended a conference of policing agencies from both sides of the border in Esquimalt to discuss “the challenges that we’re both facing and how we’re dealing with them.”
“We have got a lot of issues at the border — whether it’s weapons going both ways, the smuggling issue that’s been in the news,” he told Postmedia News. “So there’s a lot of … common interests, particularly when it comes to organized crime.”
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced human smuggling charges against two men who allegedly transported Mexican nationals from B.C. to Washington state on freight trains. American officials also said there had been a spike in human smuggling from Canada to the U.S. over the last year.