U.S. Customs releases apprehension data for NH’s border amid immigration debate

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has released years’ worth of numbers on apprehensions at New Hampshire’s northern border that shows relatively few people arrested along that stretch over the past four years.

The release of the data follows a debate about the effectiveness of the Northern Border Task Force Alliance, a $1.4 million initiative included in the last state budget that supports more aggressive patrols. Supporters say the increased patrols are dissuading people from entering, while critics say that the effort is a waste of money to police a non-existent crisis.

The new dataset was cheered by the ACLU and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who have pushed to make the figures public.

"I have long been calling on CBP to provide public transparency for Granite Staters about its Border Patrol encounter data for New Hampshire so we can better inform and equip law enforcement, and I am pleased to see the agency finally do so,” Shaheen said in an email statement.

According to the new numbers, U.S. Customs officers have apprehended 49 people along the border in New Hampshire since October of 2020. In comparison, CPB records show that officers apprehended over 27,000 people in neighboring Vermont and New York during a similar time period.

Before CBP released this data publicly, the best dataset came out of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. The suit was settled in late January and showed that there were only 21 encounters and apprehensions along New Hampshire’s border between October 2022 and December 2023.

Before the data was public, part of the difficulty in getting state-specific data is the way CBP tracks these numbers. They collect the data at the level of the border “sector,” not by individual state. New Hampshire’s border is part of the Swanton Sector, which also covers Vermont and parts of New York. The headquarters are in Swanton, Vermont, which means that any apprehensions made in New Hampshire were being counted as Vermont apprehensions

In response to the new dataset, New Hampshire ACLU Policy Director Amanda Azad also celebrated the move and hoped the new numbers will help inform the debate around immigration policy.

“We are glad to see that CBP will transparently release this data on a regular basis so that everyone has the facts about the very few unauthorized crossings occurring at New Hampshire’s northern border. We urge lawmakers in our state to ensure a fair, balanced, and humane approach to immigration policy — one that sets aside the rampant fearmongering and instead focuses on things that actually help Granite Staters in their daily lives,” she said in an email statement.

However, the numbers available to the public are slightly different from the ones made available to the ACLU in January. A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said they are looking into the discrepancy.