Most of us are aware that North Dakota has 18 ports of entry with three of those ports open 24 hours per day. And when we look at statistics, we see that Pembina is the busiest, followed by Portal then Dunseith. The following 15, with reduced hours, have ebbs and floes regarding traffic patterns.
Those of us who live near the international boundary are quite familiar with our surroundings as well as those on the immediate opposite side.
Once in a while, there will be illegal activity, but it is certainly the exception not the rule. And in my entire journalism career of 31 years, I’ve dealt with only a handful of cases that involved law enforcement.
In one situation, a man from Winnipeg dressed up in camouflage, crossed the border without going through a port of entry and was holed up in the woods near Pembina. He was later arrested and evaluated to see if he had the mental capacity to stand trial.
During my years in Kenmare, there was a man from Alaska who kidnapped a child in Alaska, crossed the Canadian border into Yukon Territory, drove all the way through Yukon, British Columbia and Alberta before crossing the border at North Portal, Saskatchewan and into North Dakota. He was allowed to pass with the child, but law enforcement was immediately alerted and he was arrested before he got to Bowbells.
In another situation, a Canadian husband and wife, had an elaborate scheme of transporting immigrants, but this was to get them into Canada. The wife would often drive from Regina to Minot, pick up immigrants and take them to a point just short of the border. They would walk across and the husband would pick them up and take them to Regina, for a fee, of course.
In one situation, an agent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police surveilled the woman picking up nine aliens at a Minot hotel. He followed them to a desolate spot near Northgate, where all nine got out, crossed into Saskatchewan and the RCMP picked them up.
That’s what I’ve witnessed in my career.
On the other hand, the commerce that crosses into and out of North Dakota continues to strengthen. Although tourism and the Canadian dollar have all but dried up in our border towns, there is still a lot of cross-border commerce.
Every day hundreds of Canadian Pacific railcars cross the border both ways carrying everything from grain and lumber to fertilizer and medical equipment.
Tens of thousands of heavy trucks cross those 18 ports every year. Most of that is grain, but we also see a lot of farm machinery going north toward Portal. Trucks from Edmonton and Calgary often carry John Deere equipment to dealerships across Alberta.
There’s also been a marked increase in heavy trucks from British Columbia driving through North Dakota. We don’t always know what the cargo is as we watch it pass, but the trailers are scanned at the border. Most of us think they are only passing through and headed to Toronto and Montreal, or returning back to Vancouver.
It seems like an awful lot of traffic, but if you think about the logistics, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver are three of the largest cities in Canada and many of those trucks cross at Portal, travel down U.S. Highway 52 to Minot and then either go south to Bismarck or east to Grand Forks.
At the very least, they have to pay a transport tax to use North Dakota’s highways. That, in and of itself, is commerce, at least for the state’s coffers.
There’s also the retail trade, that although has tapered off considerably, still exists. Occasionally, we’ll see a pickup truck with Saskatchewan license plates heading toward the border with a load of drywall or a refrigerator, or maybe other supplies. That spending helps Minot, Grand Forks and Williston, but is absolutely critical for the border towns.
