



Detroit >> U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Rep. John James, R-Shelby Township, called for securing the country’s northern border with longtime ally Canada during a campaign-style event Friday afternoon in Detroit.
As much of the national spotlight has been on Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop unauthorized crossings at the southern border with Mexico, Noem promised the crowd that Trump’s administration isn’t “letting our guard down here at the northern border.”
At another point, James, a Trump ally who’s running to be Michigan’s next governor, said, “We’re at the forefront, we’re at the epicenter of the northern border crisis.”
Their comments came at a roundtable discussion inside The Norwood that was part of a tour organized by the pro-Trump nonprofit group Building America’s Future. While it wasn’t a government event, the logo of U.S. Department of Homeland Security was posted on the table in front of Noem and James as they spoke.
Noem said Trump’s administration had achieved record-low levels of encounters with individuals crossing into the U.S. illegally at the southern border. Meanwhile, she said there had been a jump in encounters at the northern border during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s term. Noem also said cartels were attempting to bring drugs across the northern border because of Trump’s efforts to seal the southern border.
People had “talked about the fact that they see so many resources going to the southern border they get concerned that we’re forgetting about the northern border,” Noem said.
“I will assure you that is not happening under this administration,” added the secretary, who is the former governor of South Dakota.
However, overall drug seizures at the northern border were down in the first four months of Trump’s second term compared to a similar period last year under Democratic President Joe Biden, according to data from Noem’s department.
Between February and May, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 4,211 pounds of drugs along the northern border, a 36% decrease from the same four-month period in 2024 when border patrol agents confiscated 6,624 pounds of drugs, according to CBP data.
Michigan shares a 721-mile border with the Canadian province of Ontario.
At Friday’s event, Noem described Canada’s former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “train wreck” and “hard to work with.” But she said Trump’s team was hopeful that Mark Carney, who was sworn in as the new prime minister in March, would be different.
As a candidate for president last year, Trump vowed to secure the southern border and to launch the largest domestic deportation effort in the history of the country. Over the first 100 days of his second term, there were more than 139,000 deportations, according to the White House.
The deportation campaign and tactics of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have led to protests in large cities across the country. Noem told the crowd the administration will “stand strong” in the face of the opposition.
“You’ve seen on the news some of the riots and violence,” Noem said. “A lot of this is professionalized, funded by socialists, by communists, by dangerous criminals.”
Noem didn’t specify what evidence she had of the funding during the event.
Likewise, Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy, who participated in the event, acknowledged afterward that he’s not sure how the people his deputies arrest have gotten into the country.
“We’ve seen a significant reduction already,” Murphy said of encounters with people in the country illegally in Livingston County.
In a statement, Curtis Hertel, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, labeled the Friday event a distraction from a Trump-backed proposal in Washington, D.C., that Hertel said would “rip away health care from hundreds of thousands of Michiganders to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.”
“Trump and his Republican goons are hoping Michiganders won’t notice that they’re being robbed blind, but it will not work,” Hertel said. “This administration has no real solutions, and Republicans like John James that follow their lead are abandoning working families at every turn.”
Also on the panel Friday were James Tignanelli, president of the Police Officers Association of Michigan, and Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who was murdered by someone in the country illegally in 2023.
Tignanelli said people have been crossing into Michigan illegally from Canada since “the prohibition era,” when bootleggers smuggled distilled spirits across the Detroit River.
About 250 people attended the Friday afternoon event, including many Michigan lawmakers and GOP political activists. Noem took questions from the crowd. One person asked about a University of Michigan scholar from China being charged with trying to smuggle a biological pathogen that can cause diseases in crops into the United States.
Noem said the U.S. can’t allow China to control the food supply and must realize threats are coming from all directions.
“We think a pandemic was scary?” Noem asked. “You just want until people go to the grocery store and realize the only reason they can’t get food to feed their families is because China decided that day they weren’t going to eat.”