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Recent Canada–US ‘Beyond the Border’ negotiations have been accompanied by a highlighting of the issue of unauthorised crossings at the Canada–US border. In this paper, I offer some grounded contextualisation of this current politicisation by drawing upon press reports and interviews to document Canadian border-resident and press constructions of unauthorised crossings in one Canada–US border region in the late 1990s to mid-2000s. The evidence suggests that there is widespread local awareness of these crossings, including the dangers and sometimes death faced by would-be migrants. The analysis explores why this knowledge has not served to challenge still-dominant constructions of a ‘benign’ Canada–US border and/or ongoing projects of border securitisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]