On the front lines of Homeland Security

September 2, 2007
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... 002/NEWS01
By Peter Hirschfeld Staff Writer

DeLacy, 41, with his short blond hair and lanky gait, looks boyish. Dressed in his crisp forest-green border patrol uniform, the father of two young boys toils on the front lines of the United State's domestic terrorism-prevention efforts.

"Our mission has changed since 9/11," DeLacy says. "Before then it was illegal aliens and smugglers of contraband. Now our No. 1 concern is preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from coming into this country."

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 marked the largest federal reorganization in more than 50 years. The umbrella department, with more than 20 component agencies, reconfigured border security operations in Vermont and the rest of the country.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol comprises agents formerly operating under U.S. Customs, Immigration and Naturalization Services and Animal Plant Health Inspection Service. Within the agency are two cooperative divisions, the Office of Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations.

Field operatives man Vermont's 16 U.S. ports of entry, mostly situated along major border-crossing roadways, like the one on Interstate 89 in Highgate. DeLacy and his colleagues are responsible for everything in between. Their region, one of 19 in the country, employs about 170 agents and is responsible for 295 miles of border stretching from the eastern edge of Lake Erie to the New Hampshire-Maine border.

At the border patrol's regional headquarters, in Swanton, DeLacy plays a five-minute government-produced video on a giant flat-screen television.

"What seems peaceful and complacent is not," warns a female voice-over. "Entering the United States without detection is as simple as a walk in the woods."

Heavy-metal guitar music blasts through the speakers as stunt boat drivers hydroplane across open water. It's an adrenaline-fueled homage to a job that, on a recent overcast Wednesday, seemed comparatively subdued.

"In Arizona we might catch 50 in a night," DeLacy says of his six-year stint on the U.S.-Mexico border. Every border patrol agent working in Vermont has spent at least a few years on the Mexico border, and each has attended a federal training academy where they learned skills including tracking and Spanish. DeLacy says assignments in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California offer big action. But jobs in Vermont are among the most coveted.

"Here there aren't as many (illegal aliens) crossing," DeLacy says. "But we do see quite a lot of activity in this area."

In 2006, the Swanton sector detected more that 1,500 deportable aliens attempting to gain entry to the United States. Depending on their backgrounds and the circumstances of their attempted border crossing, some are let go, free to continue into the United States, and others are held and then handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"Let's say we catch a legal man smuggling in his wife and daughter," DeLacy says. "We're certainly not going to send the child and mother to jail. … Some people aren't a danger to our society here."

DeLacy says the illegals would be issued citations. If they missed their court dates, he says, they become subject to deportation. If an illegal alien caught crossing is a known smuggler, has a criminal background or just doesn't check out with the border patrol, he or she can be detained at a local jail; another federal agency would transport the detainee to holding cells in metropolitan hubs.

"It's all dictated by circumstances," DeLacy says.

DeLacy says his office doesn't interrogate suspects and that he doesn't know if the border patrol has ever caught a suspected terrorist. An FBI spokesman spoke in extraordinarily vague terms about the agency's role on the Vermont-Canada border, declining to answer a question about the number of suspected terrorists, if any, caught on that border. In one high-profile case in 1999, Lucia Garofalo and Bouabide Chamchi were arrested trying to cross the Vermont-Canada border in Beecher Falls. Chamchi, caught with a false French passport, according to a CPB Web site, was allegedly planning a millennium attack.

"Our mission is to prevent the next terrorist attack," says Paul Holstein, media coordinator and chief legal counsel for the FBI's Albany headquarters. "But I can't get into any specificity of how we do that."

DeLacy, during his 10-hour day shift, patrols his section of border as a police officer might keep tabs on a city beat. Outfitted with a firearm, DeLacy meanders through the dusty back roads of Vermont's border towns in a green-and-white cruiser. He is one of about 170 agents covering 295 miles of border in the Swanton sector.

"It's not like there's big fences. There's not as many agents per mile as in the Southwest, and we have unguarded roads," DeLacy says. "You can just drive back and forth between two countries. There's nothing to stop you."

Agents travel by foot through the woods, by boat over lakes and ponds and can call in air support when necessary. The Swanton sector, aided by motion sensors that trigger hidden cameras in the woods and along the roads, yielded more than $2 million in currency seizures and nearly two tons worth of marijuana seizures in 2006 alone. The figures are for all 295 miles of border; statistics for Vermont aren't available.

"We get everything: people, marijuana, ecstasy, currency," DeLacy says.

Human smuggling, DeLacy says, is big business. Organized crime groups with bases in Boston, New York and beyond, he says, regularly traffic large numbers of illegal aliens into the United States.

"Take a globe, spin it around, close your eyes and stop it. Chances are we've caught someone from there," DeLacy says.

DeLacy's counterparts in the Office of Field Operations won't disclose statistics on the number of illegals attempting to gain entry into the United States through Vermont. Theodore Woo, a public affairs officer for Customs and Border Patrol based in Boston, said in an e-mail that "I will not get into details regarding a specific port of entry as it relates to numbers, employees, etc."

Balancing security with diplomacy has been a tough act lately. Border security has come under the scrutiny of Vermont's congressional representatives this summer as international travelers endure hours-long waits at ports of entry. U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders says the delays – purportedly due to increased efforts to curb human and drug smuggling – hurt commerce and culture in both countries.

"What I have heard unofficially from Customs people there is there is a significant shortage of staffing on the border," Sanders says. "This is a situation that has very serious economic implications. Even people's ability to visit friends and family is becoming stressed and strained."

Sanders says the federal government must appropriate enough resources to ensure public safety without compromising the benefits of a free and flowing border between longtime allies.

"We've got two issues here: One is how do you protect the United States against a terrorist attack. ... That is a real, legitimate problem. … The other is how to we maintain the commerce and travel so important to both these countries," Sanders says. "With good management, you can do both."

Before 9/11, the United States staffed about 300 agents on the U.S.-Canada border, not including the ports of entry. Today, the number is closer to 1,000. And the United States is in the midst of a recruiting campaign that will add 6,000 border agents in coming years.

Sanders plans scheduled meetings with Department of Homeland Security officials, possibly including director Michael Chertoff, to see if he can appropriate some of those agents on the Vermont-Canada border.

DeLacy says the Swanton sector "can always use more" agents and often references the ongoing recruitment push. But he says existing agents will keep Vermonters, and the rest of the United States, safe from whatever threat exists to the north.

"I don't know if any terrorist has tried to get through here yet or not," DeLacy says, surveying a vast stretch of green field inhabited by a lone farmhouse. "But we want to get 'em the first time they try."