From a multimillion-dollar total in the recovery of evaded taxes and duties to hundreds of tariff and weapons seizures, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) says its 2025 highlights are evidence of a very busy year for the border crossings at Fort Frances and Rainy River.
“There were multiple commercial trade referrals where they recovered over $180,000 of duties and taxes that were evaded,” CBSA Officer Patrick Deschene told the Times.
“There were 209 seizures in 2025 in the ports of entry at Fort Frances and Rainy River. Twenty-five of those were related to prohibited, restricted or undeclared firearms or weapons. Forty-four outstanding wants and warrants were intercepted and 14 interceptions of people failing to report or running the report – illegal entries where the officers were able to intercept and those travellers received a penalty for running the port of entry.”
Millions of dollars in misclassified tariffs were identified entering via the Fort Frances-Ranier rail crossing, Deschene said.
“There were some mining shelters being imported with incorrect tariff classifications. The port of Fort Frances was able to intercept this importation, and they stopped the evasion of $6.3 million in duties and taxes.”
A number of rail cars were intercepted with unidentified people aboard in 2025, either working on the behalf of a rail company and undeclared or otherwise boarding the train. However, Deschene said that determining the exact number of people who entered this way remains unclear due to the high volume of international rail traffic through Fort Frances.
Deschene said there remains a common misconception among those on both sides of the border about the laws surrounding the export and import of cannabis.
“There is a general trend in the last couple years for most ports of entries, and especially in the Northwest district, because cannabis and cannabis products are legal in Canada and in legal in lots of the U.S. states, that you can freely import them back and forth,” Deschene said. “You cannot.”
The import or export of any cannabis-related products, including edibles, is prohibited. That hasn’t stopped some people from doing so, whether intentionally or not, Deschene said, and the number of travellers receiving penalties increased.
“A lot of it is personal use and they’re just not aware that it’s illegal to import it into the country,” Deschene said. “In those cases, often there will be either a small monetary fine, or it just gets forfeited to Canada Border Services Agency, and then they’re free to go on their way.”
Requests for comment from the United States Customs and Border Protection service regarding comparable statistics from the International Falls and Baudette ports of entry were not returned.
