Alberta launched its own border patrol last year to help stop the flow of illegal drugs and migrants across what Premier Danielle Smith called the “leaky” U.S. border. But the Interdiction Patrol Team (IPT) has so far made only a handful of arrests for those offences, according to data released through an access to information request.

In an effort to quell U.S. President Donald Trump’s concerns about illegal drugs and migrants moving across the northern border, and prevent Canada from being hit with 25 per cent tariffs, Alberta’s United Conservative government invested $29 million in December to create its own border patrol unit. 

Plans for the IPT, which is under the command of the Alberta Sheriffs, included hiring up to 51 officers, as well as employing patrol dogs, surveillance drones and drug testing equipment. The province also designated all land within two kilometres of the U.S.-Alberta border as essential infrastructure under the province’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act, enabling sheriffs to make arrests near the border without a warrant.

From the time the IPT began operations in January until Aug. 8, the unit had made two arrests for illegal border crossing and five arrests for trafficking in a controlled substance, data from the Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Services (PSES) show.

Of these seven arrests, four occurred within the two-kilometre border zone.

Though one agency has been tasked with policing both migration and drug trafficking, these are distinct objectives, and the reasons for the low number of apprehensions are likely quite different, said Karine Côté-Boucher, an associate professor of criminology at Université de Montréal.

“Preventing asylum seekers to cross the border in Alberta is political rhetoric, because since 2016 most of the border crossings at the land border happened at the Quebec-Vermont border,” Côté-Boucher said.

About 90 to 95 per cent of people who have crossed the land border into Canada to claim asylum did so in Quebec, she said.

“Alberta sees very little of these people who come in and cross and ask for refugee status. So, it’s not surprising, therefore, that people are not intercepted in Alberta,” she said.

Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) suggests that the number of unapproved migrants entering the U.S. from Alberta is also relatively low.

The agency tracks the number of “encounters” related to unapproved migrants, which includes irregular migrants, people who attempted to enter the country legally but were deemed ineligible and people who withdrew their application for entry and returned to their country of origin within a short time frame.

CBP has reported 81,311 “encounters” along the entire northern border since Oct. 1, 2024, with just 117 of these encounters at the Havre sector, which includes the border between Alberta and Montana.

Cross-border trafficking of drugs and guns is an actual issue, Côté-Boucher said, but one that requires serious intelligence work and analysis to effectively police. Côté-Boucher mentioned a major drug bust in Alberta this September that seized $15 million of pure cocaine. The cross-border investigation developed over more than two years and involved municipal police and RCMP from the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams unit, as well as U.S. agencies.

“This is something you do when you have data, and you sit down, and you actually do the intelligence work. Presence at the border doesn’t change that,” she said. “This takes years to develop.”

Between Oct. 1, 2024 ,and Sept. 1, 2025, U.S. officials seized 0.33 kilograms of drugs in nine incidents at the Havre border patrol sector, according to CBP data.

The five arrests reported by IPT for trafficking a controlled substance occurred in the Municipal District of Willow Creek, Rocky View County, Wetaskiwin County and the Municipal District of Foothills. Drugs seized included cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and various pills, a spokesperson for PSES told the Investigative Journalism Foundation.

Arthur Green, press secretary to the minister of public safety and emergency services, said the IPT arrest statistics haven’t changed the government’s stance on the need for heightened border security. Green suggested having more law enforcement visibly patrolling the border has caused a drop in crime.

“Alberta’s government is committed to doing whatever it takes to keep people safe. Increased officer presence matters and has proven to be a clear deterrent to criminal activity near Alberta’s southern border. By targeting cross-border drug, weapons and human trafficking, we are taking direct action to combat illegal activity that threatens lives and livelihoods,” Green said in a written statement.

Since January, the IPT has also helped federal partner agencies respond to five irregular border crossings and drug trafficking, investigated a suspected human sex trafficking operation, and investigated thousands of criminal and provincial files related to activities at or around the border, Green said.

Though often referred to as the border patrol, the IPT operates throughout southern and central Alberta. Data shows the team made a total of 92 arrests as of Aug. 8. The most frequent reasons for arrest included warrant execution (30), traffic stop (24) and impaired driving (six).

David Shepherd, the Alberta New Democrat public safety critic, said that if the government is claiming the added patrols have deterred crime, “let them show the statistics from last year that show there was a much higher level of incidents in the area before they put the team in.”

The money the province invested in the IPT could have had more impact on crime in Alberta if it was spent putting more peace officers on the ground in communities and pairing them with social workers to do “the core work of addressing social disorder,”  Shepherd said.

“Spending [$29 million] for a handful of arrests along the border simply because they want to posture against the federal government, whose responsibility is to patrol the border, demonstrates this is a government that’s not only bad with money, they’re bad with policy.”

Since the IPT has been active, Kelly Sundberg, professor of criminology at Mount Royal University, said he’s taken trips down to southern Alberta and the border patrol unit has been a topic of discussion among locals.

“It’s kind of a mixed bag on how people feel,” he said. A lot of people believed something more needed to be done regarding border integrity and hoped the IPT would be part of that fix, but their presence has also meant more run-ins with sheriffs and tickets for infractions like speeding, according to Sundberg.

“It’s funny. The thing that really pissed people off when I talked to them …  was the traffic stops and traffic enforcement.”

These inconveniences aside, Sundberg said these complaints are proof that the IPT is visible and making its presence known. “If the average farmer is annoyed by their presence and them always being down there, you know the smugglers are avoiding it.”

He argues that if the presence of the IPT is a deterrent, the question isn’t whether crime has dropped, but where it has been diverted to. “When you squeeze a balloon, where is the other bubble showing up?” Sundberg asked.

Maybe someone who would have tried to smuggle contraband through the Alberta border crossing is instead eyeing a location in B.C. or Manitoba, Sundberg said. To prevent actual co-ordinated criminal activity from merely being redistributed along the border, he said there needs to be improved co-ordination among the existing border agencies across the country. Legally and logistically, that level of multi-jurisdictional collaboration falls to the federal government.

Alberta and other provinces and municipalities are taking up border security responsibilities outside of their mandate, but “they’re only doing it out of desperation and out of necessity,” Sundberg said.

There has been a trend for provinces and municipalities to jump on the border patrol wagon “in a very unplanned and chaotic way,” Côté-Boucher said. With different levels of government operating in the same space, there is potential for inter-agency frictions to arise as well as questions about operational costs, such as for ongoing equipment maintenance, to be downloaded to municipal or provincial taxpayers.

“Those are really important questions. Apart from efficiency, those things cost money. And do we have better places to put that money?” she said.

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