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Beefed up at the border
VIDEO: Beefing up the border

Map of upper New York (.pdf) Seven years after 9/11, the U.S. is seriously cracking down on foreigners trying to sneak in from Canada

Sep 07, 2008 04:30 AM
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Andrew Chung
Staff Reporter

CHAMPLAIN, N.Y.–The end of America, literally, can be found along countless forlorn and narrow roads like the one Mickey Matott lives on here in upstate New York. It winds a bit this way and that, past fields of soybeans and rickety barns, until it just stops, his modest house like a period at the end of a long sentence.

There is more paved road beyond. But that's Canada. In between, there is a gate with a large "Road Closed" sign affixed to it.

Matott has lived here long enough to notice some differences. For one, the steady stream of illegals – "aliens" they're called here – walking unimpeded into the U.S. on this road has all but stopped.

"Oh yeah," he laughs, shaking his head while standing on his stoop, "there used to be so many crossing all the time; they used to come by dragging their suitcases."

That's all changed, Matott says. "They really put a halt to it. Now they patrol all over – they've been down here 10 times already today."

Bearded and shirtless, the 55-year-old prison guard cuts an affable, Santa Claus-like figure as he relaxes on a recent weekend afternoon. But then he motions to the tall pine in his front yard. You have to look closely, but deep in the richly needled branches there's a surveillance camera, nearly undetectable in its black weatherproof housing, trained on the gate. Below it is an electronic sensor, its thin arm directed at the road.

Matott is a proud American, but living right on the border with Canada, he sees a potential dark side to the intense new border security. Apart from the comings and goings of illegal aliens, the government now knows when Matott himself has left and returned to his house. He has emerged from his front door to find U.S. Border Patrol agents in his yard, he says (his dogs even bit one once).

"They can come right into your house if they want," he says. "It's all gone a bit too far." (The Champlain Border Patrol says agents will enter private property unannounced, but not a private dwelling.)

Seven years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the longest unguarded border in the world is becoming increasingly guarded. As critics continue to insist it's vulnerable to undetected entry by terrorists, the border is being squeezed tighter.

And illegal crossers are getting the message, the Border Patrol asserts.

Along the northern frontier, the number of arrests has been dropping steadily and significantly since before 9/11 – from more than 12,000 each year before 2001 to 6,380 last year. While it's impossible to know how many people try to sneak into the U.S., arrests are considered one of the best barometers. "We believe people are being deterred from entering the U.S. because the chances of them getting caught are now much greater," says Border Patrol operations officer Mark Henry. "A lot of it also has to do with us getting the right combination of personnel, technology and infrastructure on the border. We've received more agents, more sensors, more cars, more boats, more airplanes."The trend is reflected on the southern border with Mexico as well, where arrests are down significantly. More agents, an emphasis on prosecuting crossers instead of just deporting them and laws cracking down on employers who use illegal aliens, as well as a faltering economy, are all seen as contributing to the effect.

But the emphasis since 9/11 has shifted to the northern frontier. "The focus for them on the northern border is that it's a door for terrorists, whereas the southern border, it's been a mass of people desperate for work," says Sophie Feal, supervising immigration attorney at the Erie County Bar Association's Volunteer Lawyers Project in Buffalo. "So the way they justify this inordinate amount of enforcement resources on the northern border is the threat of terrorism."

Feal says that in the past year, the zeal for arrest and removal has been "so extraordinary."



MOST CANADIANS are aware of stepped-up security at border crossings or at the airport. The Border Patrol is eager to show how the same is happening everywhere in between.

In the change room at the tidy Champlain Border Patrol station, a sticker decorates a locker door: "Terrorist Hunting Permit," it reads. "Permit No. 91101."

"Nine/eleven really opened the eyes of people in the U.S., and Canada," Richard Labounty, a Border Patrol supervisor, says of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. "It's one of our most important missions, to apprehend terrorists and terrorist weapons."

Border authorities also worry about organized crime using its smuggling expertise to carry across such weapons, not caring that they're profiting from entities bent on destroying the U.S.

Champlain region, with its access to major highways, is a prime target. Last fall, federal prosecutors brought down what they alleged were two of the largest human smuggling rings ever discovered in the northeastern U.S., based in Toronto and Montreal. Hundreds were moved into the U.S. between here and Vermont, where they would follow footpaths in the dense forest and meet up with a car on the other side.

None of the people smuggled were suspected terrorists, but worries were stoked by memories of the so-called Millennium Bomber, Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested in Port Angeles, Wash., in December 1999 while trying to enter the U.S. from Victoria, B.C., with explosives he planned to use to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.

Here in Clinton County, the border is barely an interruption in the rural landscape. Mostly the "slash," as it's called in Border Patrol lingo, is obscure, sometimes edging a farm field, sometimes slicing through a stand of conifers. In some places it's marked by an unremarkable obelisk.

A back-road tour with soft-spoken Labounty shows that the other remote routes that lead to Canada are, like Matott's, blocked off. The gates in place are not the Berlin Wall, but Labounty explains they are backed up by a growing array of surveillance cameras and sensors – be they motion, seismic, metal or infrared.

Labounty insists the Border Patrol is gaining "operational control." The idea is that every illegal entry "will come to a law enforcement conclusion at the border."

Champlain now has 34 agents, about double the number it had when Labounty arrived nine years ago from the southern border, where all officers are first assigned. Space is getting tight; a new station will be needed soon.

In 2001, there were just 340 Border Patrol agents assigned to the U.S.-Canada boundary. There will be over 1,800 agents by next year, a near sixfold increase.

The majority of people coming into the United States are from countries other than Canada. Labounty hauls out last year's worn logbook. "They're from everywhere imaginable," he says, flipping through the pages. India, Pakistan, Burundi, Iran – each country of origin is meticulously written in ink. Any narcotics are also noted.

He's surprisingly sympathetic toward the illegals, given the gruff reputation of border authorities and his own emphasis on stopping terrorists. "You may feel bad for them, for the country they came from," he says. "But you have to do your job."



OTHER SECURITY measures are also front and centre in and around Champlain: a sprawling new border entry station at Champlain, complete with radiation detection; a flight base in nearby Plattsburgh, one of five such bases along the Canadian border so helicopters and airplanes can patrol regularly; stepped-up boarding of buses and trains in search of illegal aliens.

There's also the removal of the "honour system" both on land and on the water. Smaller land ports that were in the past left open when staff went off-duty, with drivers expected to report to a larger 24-hour station, are now simply gated off. And on Lake Champlain, where the international border is marked by a small buoy, many boaters would ignore the expectation to report to the nearest marina. To counter this, the Border Patrol built a new dock that customs officers now use as a central processing point, while agents intercept boaters and funnel them there.

The new system means 100-per-cent compliance now, agents say. "How can you let boats do an honour system and know what's really going on?" Labounty argues. "This has been so successful, I think you're going to see it spread to other areas."

On this outing, Labounty and Kathy Edwards keep an eye on two small river boats that don't seem to be turning toward the dock. They speed toward them. It turns out they're Quebecers who didn't realize they were in U.S. waters. They must report to U.S. Customs anyway.

Torontonian Jason Haist and his cousin Edward Haist got a taste of the security zeal after Jason was tossed from his Sea-Doo in some Niagara River rapids, knocked unconscious and washed up on American shores. Despite Jason having nearly drowned, the two were arrested for entering the U.S. illegally and thrown in a federal detention facility.

Road checkpoints are also on the rise. Attorney Feal of the Volunteer Lawyers' Project says that U.S. law treats geography within 160 kilometres of the border as its "functional equivalent," allowing Border Patrol agents to set up checks along Interstate Routes 87 or 90 "much more inland than presumed."

"They get on Amtrak or Greyhound, identify people who may look like non-citizens, and often they find people who are not," Feal says.

She estimates that a full third of the men at the Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, N.Y., where most of Champlain's arrestees end up, were picked up aboard a bus or train.

Feal's group is the only one that's conducting legal seminars in Batavia to help illegal aliens know their rights. The volunteer lawyers cannot otherwise help the foreigners because the government is not compelled to offer court-appointed lawyers in civil cases like deportation hearings – only in criminal ones. This means that in the majority of cases, Feal says, the detainees must represent themselves in court, a situation she calls "disturbing."

That is, unless they've been charged criminally, which is happening more frequently, she says, and much more on the northern border than the southern one. Instead of just being removed to their home country, illegal aliens are being prosecuted for entering without inspection, ensuring jail time.

"The bottom line is that it's a criminal process involving a criminal penalty and a criminal record, which is quite severe if you're talking about someone who has just crossed the border and done nothing else."

Some question the value of dramatically increased enforcement and the jailing of aliens. Plattsburgh attorney Mark Schneider says the result is arrest and conviction statistics that the Department of Homeland Security can use "to show they're protecting us." And local jails hold those sentenced and are paid per diem, "so it helps the local economy."

Meanwhile, "I think the people that I see are not the kind of folks that Americans need to be afraid of," he says. "They're not catching any terrorists up here."

Feal argues that the increasing enforcement is costly, and won't make aliens go away. "When we consider that most people who migrate to the U.S. or Canada do so out of desperation, whether out of fear of being mistreated or persecuted, or for work, they will keep coming and nothing will dissuade them."

Pamela Kefi, executive director of the International Institute of Buffalo, which provides services to refugees and immigrants, agrees that the flow of illegal entrants will continue. "Yes, there is a criminal element, but most who cross borders are doing so for economic opportunity," she contends. "There are not many legal ways to do that for poor people."

Lawyers and citizens also worry about the rights of average citizens bending under the weight of all the security. Just last week the U.S. government disclosed it had begun collecting and storing information on all American citizens crossing by land, which could help identify travel patterns, potentially valuable information in terrorism investigations. The government also wants to exempt the database from some privacy-law provisions.

Matott, who lives on the border, says security measures have changed his life too. He used to transport hay into Canada before it became too much of a hassle. "It's deterred a lot of local people from going up."

Despite all the new enforcement, Quebecer Diane Allard knows that the problem of illegal immigrants isn't going away.

She lives just north of U.S. Route 276. Her lawn ends at the border with the States. But her driveway fronts onto the tip of a dead-end Canadian road. There, typically at night as Sunday becomes Monday, there are drop-offs. She knows it's happening when her dog starts to bark. She has seen people emerge from the vans, sometimes on her driveway, and walk into the U.S. They soon disappear.

There are fewer crossings ever since the Border Patrol installed a camera. But still they come. She worries they may be criminals, or even terrorists.

"For us it's stressful because we don't know who they are," Allard says during a family barbecue. "If they choose to cross illegally, who knows?"


http://www.thestar.com/article/492206


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