HOULTON, Maine — It’s hard to know why two Romanian youths decided to trudge across a remote section of the U.S.-Canada border in January, navigating through knee-deep snow before Border Patrol agents found and took them into custody.
But there are some broad factors that could help to explain a larger uptick in the numbers of Romanian citizens illegally crossing Maine’s international border with Canada in recent years.
For one, many Romanians have been leaving their Eastern European nation for reasons that include a poor economy, concerns about the war in nearby Ukraine and discrimination against the Roma ethnic group. On top of that, experts and border officials said human smuggling could be bringing a subset of them through northern Maine.
Romanians now make up one of the largest groups that’s encountered by the Houlton Sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, second only to Mexicans. That’s despite Romanians accounting for just a tiny portion — less than 1 percent — of the border agency’s overall encounters across the nation.
Of the 344 encounters that agents had with people illegally crossing the border into Maine last fiscal year, 12 percent involved Romanians, according to CBP data. That portion was up from the year before, and it has grown again to 13 percent in the first few months of this fiscal year, which started in October.
Border officials do not have a definitive explanation, but they have identified some common factors in the Romanians they have encountered.
Chief Patrol Agent Juan Bernal, who assumed command of the Houlton Sector last year, speculated that existing criminal operations in the Northeast might be part of the draw.
“What’s really common, especially with the Romanian demographic, is that a lot are involved in some type of fraudulent activity,” Bernal said, adding that they may communicate with family and friends who inform them about opportunities in the U.S. “They tell them, ‘Come down, we’re making all this money exploiting the locals and committing these fraudulent acts.’”
Experts at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute think tank have noted that if anything, the total numbers of Romanians migrating to the U.S. has been declining. According to CBP data, encounters with Romanians illegally crossing the borders fell from 7,411 in the 2022 fiscal year to 3,692 in 2023 and 2,548 last year.
Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute, previously suggested that the recent increase at the Maine section of the border may indicate the opening of a new — albeit small — smuggling market.
“Some person or entity is now facilitating travel and making it easier for people who have the money to pay for a smuggler,” Mittelstadt said. “But again, with conditions so favorable for Romanians to access other EU countries, it seems unlikely that this represents the start of a significant new pattern of movement.”
Mittelstadt noted that Romania is set to join the U.S. Visa Waiver Program at the end of March, meaning its travelers will soon be able to enter the U.S. without needing to first get a visa.
There are other, larger explanations for why Romanians are leaving their home country for the U.S., sometimes risking arrest or even death along the way.
Following the 1989 Christmas Revolution that toppled the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania has struggled to fully rise from the poverty and fear that came with decades of repressive communist rule.
In 2007, the country of 19 million joined the European Union, and it has transitioned into an advanced democracy with solid economic gains, according to a 2024 report by the global BTI Project. Nonetheless, despite recent advances, more than 4 million people have migrated out of Romania since it became an EU member, according to the BBC.
They have generally left in search of higher wages, or to flee political corruption. There have also been ongoing impacts from Russia’s nearby war in Ukraine, with drone attacks just across the border as recently as January.
According to recent surveys of EU members, Romania has higher rates of unhappiness than many of the other countries, with roughly a third of its citizens reporting dissatisfaction with the direction of their lives and a lack of faith that their lives would improve in 2025. They cited the need for more jobs, higher pay and the war in the Ukraine.
Another, more specific factor contributing to Romanians crossing into the U.S. in recent years has been that they are part of the Roma ethnic minority, which numbers about 8,000 and has long faced discrimination in Europe, according to news reports. The group also struggled with disproportionate rates of poverty and economic insecurity during the pandemic.
Beyond those broad factors causing Romanians to leave their home country, it is harder to isolate the reasons why they have been crossing specifically through Maine in recent years.
After the Bangor Daily News first reported on the trend, one reader reached out to question whether some of the migrants could be women swept up in sex trafficking. Romania does not meet all of the U.S. State Department’s minimum standards for preventing human trafficking, and Houlton’s border chief, Bernal, confirmed that “there are historical incidents of that happening.”
“It’s common across the nation even if it doesn’t originate here,” he said. “It could originate at the southern border, but then some of the individuals being trafficked or fallen victim to that criminal activity may end up in our region in the Northeast.”
