A Border Wall to the North? Republicans Want to Discuss.

Former President Donald J. Trump paved a path to the presidency in 2016 by calling for a “big, beautiful wall” along the United States border with Mexico.

His 2024 rivals in the Republican primary election, scrapping for every advantage against him, looked north.

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has frequently told voters that it’s not just the southern border that needs stepped-up enforcement — “it’s the northern border, too.”

“I think we do whatever it takes to keep people out,” she told reporters on Saturday when asked if her comments meant she supported building a wall. “If that’s what it takes to keep them out, we will do a wall, we will do any sort of border patrol that we need to have.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who ended his bid and endorsed Mr. Trump on Sunday after battling with Ms. Haley for second place behind the former president, had recently suggested building a wall along some trouble spots of the U.S.-Canada frontier. Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur, dropped out of the race last week, but not before trekking up to Pittsburg, N.H., a tiny town that sits just below the jagged, 5,500-mile line that divides the United States and Canada, with a camera crew in tow. He later drew criticism from Canadian journalists and pundits when he proclaimed that the United States should not just build one wall, but two.

In Pittsburg, where residents like Beverly Martin, 79 and Chip Jones, 74, sat at the bar in an eclectic, barnlike restaurant on a recent snowy afternoon, the idea of a border wall along New Hampshire’s northernmost boundary, an isolated, forested region, was anathema.