KATHLEEN GALLIGAN/Detroit Free Press

Border patrol agents guard the north channel of the St. Clair River earlier this month. The U.S. Border Patrol made 761 arrests last year in Michigan, mostly along the St. Clair and Detroit rivers.

Patrols guard against smugglers on Michigan-Ontario border
BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • June 22, 2009

Read Comments(9)Recommend(2)

As the weather heats up, so does the smuggling across the waterways between Michigan and Ontario. And the numbers are on the rise each year, with a 6% increase in arrests by the U.S. Border Patrol from 2007 to 2008.



Law enforcement agencies hope to slow down the smuggling -- primarily narcotics and illegal immigrants coming into Michigan and alcohol and cigarettes going into Canada -- by beefing up equipment and patrols.

A new $6-million federal grant is paying law enforcement overtime, increasing the manpower for patrols. The Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed an unprecedented agreement last Thursday aimed at pooling resources and sharing critical information regarding border investigations.

On the surveillance end, a series of 31 cameras with round-the-clock monitoring are being added to the St. Clair River, plus a mobile unit with cameras and other equipment will help plug any gaps. Agents have a tall task before them because the smugglers easily blend in with other boaters. A small fishing boat full of illegal immigrants looks just like the hundreds of other fishing boats loaded with fishermen. Boats with coolers of drinks look just like a boat with a cooler full of street drugs.

"But you can't just throw your hands up in the air and just go home," said Capt. Dave Teske, head of the Macomb County Sheriff's Marine Division. "You do the best you can with the tools that we have. And I think for the most part we do a darn good job."

Fast boats, short distance make it easier
Whenever a motorboat pulls up to her seawall in the middle of the night, pauses, then roars away, Sheila Fidler figures another smuggler has likely brought a load of contraband into the United States.


It's a sound that has become familiar after 35 years of living on Algonac's waterfront.


"Sometimes it happens every couple of weeks," Fidler said.


The U.S. Border Patrol made 761 arrests last year in Michigan, mostly along the St. Clair and Detroit rivers. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the other federal agency responsible for border arrests, said it made about the same number of arrests during that same period, though exact numbers were not available. That's an average of more than four arrests a day.


Drugs and illegal immigrants are the main cargo coming into Michigan. Authorities say they believe criminal rings are involved in the smuggling of many of the illegal immigrants. For $2,000 to $3,000, almost anyone can get a trip across the river, they said.


Officers also suspect increased security at land crossings, such as bridges, is leading to an increase in narcotics smuggled across the water. Border agents found an undocumented Albanian last March in a riverside park in Detroit with a hockey bag filled with about $28,600 worth of marijuana.


New federal grants are expected to provide the equipment and staff to help curb the crimes.


And there are multiple agencies -- local law enforcement, sheriff's patrols, the U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Coast Guard, drug enforcement, customs and immigration agents, and Canadian law enforcement officers -- all keeping an eye on the Michigan-Ontario border.

Tough to catch
But all the agents in the world probably couldn't stop all of the smuggling -- the job bears a disturbing comparison to the old cliché about the needle and the haystack.


"One of the biggest issues we have here, especially now when we get into the heavy boating season, is differentiating the legitimate boating people from that 1% who are smuggling," said Border Patrol Agent Kurstan Rosberg. "There are virtually unlimited places there where" contraband can be dropped off.


Rosberg is talking about the sometimes thousands of boaters on Lake St. Clair and the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, which are rimmed with marinas, canals and nearly hidden creeks that make it easy for a boat to quickly disappear.


Put it all together and the waterways are almost ideal places for smugglers to mingle and hide. Law enforcement authorities know that the only way to catch a smuggler is to be in the same place at the same time.


"We have to catch them in the act," said Staff Sgt. Ed (Rocky) Golden, acting commander of the St. Clair County Sheriff's Marine Division. "They're pretty fast, usually in a small, 14-, 16-foot boat with a couple of hundred horsepower motor."

And that's where updated technology, thanks to multimillion federal grants, and tipsters like Fidler might help.

Islands provide cover
Most of the Michigan arrests are made on the St. Clair and Detroit rivers, which have been smuggling highways since the 1800s and the days of the Underground Railroad. Islands dotting the rivers, such as the St. Clair River delta and those around Grosse Ile, act like stepping stones across the water.


"The old rum runners came over this way, I saw them when I was a kid," said John Zens of Algonac, referring to Prohibition days.


The St. Clair River has one more factor added to that mix, the Walpole Island First Nation, a band of American Indians living on a group of islands just off the Ontario shore. It's a 2 to 3-minute ride in a fast boat from Walpole's Chematogan Channel to the U.S. side. Law enforcement officials say some members have smuggled drugs and people for generations.


Calls to the First Nation spokesperson on Walpole were not returned.


The Michigan border doesn't get the national publicity of the southern border with Mexico. There is less smuggling traffic here, but there are also far fewer agents -- 1,200 Border Patrol agents on more than 4,000 miles of the northern U.S. border, for example, compared with 17,000 agents on the 2,000 miles of the Mexican border.


But there is one big difference for those trying to catch the smugglers -- the southern border is primarily open land where a truck full of people is far more easily spotted than boaters on the St. Clair and Detroit rivers, said Rosberg, who used to be based in San Diego.


Though a group of undocumented immigrants from China couldn't quite pass themselves off as duck hunters in Algonac recently, despite some camouflage clothing.


"We don't know what percentage of the smugglers we're catching. It may be 5%, it could be 50%," said retired U.S. Customs Inspector Bob Dazer of Port Huron, who once caught $5.1 million worth of Ecstasy hidden in a hollowed-out area under the backseat of a car coming off the Algonac-to-Canada ferry.


Contact PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI: mmwalsh@freepress.com




http://www.freep.com/article/20090622/N ... +on+border