A 26-year-old New Hampshire man is facing attempted murder charges after he opened fire on a border patrol agent at the northern border on Sunday, according to federal authorities.

According to WCAX News, Blu Zeke Daly of Manchester arrived at the Pittsburg port of entry at the New Hampshire-Canada border crossing, began to turn around and drive away, then fired a handgun at the agent. The agent returned fire, striking Daly, who ran into a snowbank. He is currently being treated at a hospital. The border patrol agent was not shot.

The Northern Border Gets Its Wake-Up Call

Americans have spent the better part of a decade focused on the southern border, and for good reason. But incidents like this one are a blunt reminder that the northern border is not the sleepy, friendly crossing that politicians in Washington like to pretend it is.

The details here are spare but striking. A man pulls up to a federal port of entry, decides to flee, and instead of simply driving away, fires at the agent standing between him and departure. Whatever Daly was doing at that crossing, it wasn't tourism.

Federal authorities have not released further details about a motive or what prompted Daly to approach the border in the first place. That silence leaves open questions worth asking. Was this a smuggling run gone sideways? An attempt to cross into Canada to evade something domestic? The facts will surface in time. What we know right now is that a federal agent doing his job nearly took a bullet for it.

Border Agents Deserve Better Than Indifference

For years, the political class treated border security as a southern problem and a political football. Agents along the Canadian border operate with less staffing, less attention, and less political support than their counterparts in Texas or Arizona, even as threats at northern crossings remain real.

This agent responded exactly as trained. He returned fire, neutralized the threat, and survived. That outcome is not guaranteed. Every shift at a port of entry carries risks that most Americans never think about, and that most legislators only acknowledge when a camera is rolling.

The charging of Daly with attempted murder is the correct response. A man who fires a weapon at a federal officer at a border crossing is not a sympathetic figure, and the legal system should treat him accordingly. No bail hearing theater. No hand-wringing about root causes. A man shot at a law enforcement officer. Prosecute him.

What Happens Next

Details remain thin. Federal authorities have not identified the specific agency handling the case beyond confirming the charges, and the hospital where Daly is being treated has not been named. The border patrol agent's identity has not been disclosed, which is standard practice in these situations.

But the broader question lingers. The Pittsburg port of entry sits in a remote stretch of northern New Hampshire, the kind of crossing that rarely makes national news. It just did. If one man with a handgun can turn a routine encounter into a shooting, it raises obvious questions about staffing, infrastructure, and preparedness at dozens of similar crossings along the 3,987-mile northern border.

Securing America's borders means securing all of them. Not just the ones that trend on social media.