U.S.-Canada Border Leaves Many Jittery

By BETH DUFF-BROWN and PAULINE ARRILLAGA
The Associated Press
Monday, July 4, 2005; 1:43 PM

ON THE U.S.-CANADA BORDER -- Nearly four years after the Sept. 11
terror attacks and after billions in security investment on both
sides of this frontier stretching from Atlantic to Pacific,
authorities and average folks are still jittery. Here's why:

- At the edge of a sprawling raspberry field where Washington state
meets British Columbia, a U.S. Border Patrol agent shakes his head at
tire tracks that snake between rows of berries and over the
international boundary, which here is a gravel ditch so puny a person
could leap it.

"They're long gone," says agent Candido Villalobos, who raced to the
scene after a surveillance camera spotted the vehicle _ transporting
contraband? Drug money? Something more sinister? Too late to
know. "They beat us," Villalobos murmurs.

- At Sandwich, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, the Olde Town
Bake Shoppe overlooks the Ambassador Bridge, the busiest trade
crossing between the United States and Canada. Thousands of trucks
rumble along its lanes daily, loaded with everything from Nova Scotia
salmon to U.S. auto parts.

But bakery owner Mary Ann Cuderman worries about what else might be
passing, especially given public concern that infrastructure could be
a terrorist target. A citizens group she heads, the Windsor West
Community Truck Watch Coalition, wants closer scrutiny. "How do you
feel secure," she says, "knowing that anybody, at any time, could
drive right up on that bridge?"

- Near the eastern end of the border, where Maine and New Brunswick
touch, the story prompted international headlines, comedians'
snickers and lawmakers' ire: A man carrying a homemade sword, a
hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what
seemed like blood sought entry to the United States. After
confiscating his weapons and questioning him, border agents let him
in.

Canadian-born Gregory Despres was a naturalized U.S. citizen
returning home, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials
explained. But the day after he was admitted to America back in
April, authorities in his Canadian hometown found two bodies _ one
decapitated, the other stabbed to death. Despres was arrested
wandering a road in Massachusetts.

"The whole thing gives me a queasy feeling," says Colin Kenny,
chairman of Canada's Standing Senate Committee on National Security
and Defense.

Two U.S. congressmen, Edward Markey and Stephen Lynch, sent a letter
to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, seeking answers
about the Despres case and a review of entry procedures. Said
Markey: "Giving the green light to this deranged individual to enter
our country raises serious questions about these procedures."

Balancing the historic openness of the U.S.-Canada border with
today's necessary wariness is a challenge the two nations still have
not mastered _ and some fear the continued ambivalence could be
harmful.

"Despite what should have been the wakeup call of September 11, 2001,
there has been an unsettling lack of progress on both sides of the
border to improve efficiency and strengthen security at land border
crossings," said a 192-page report issued last month by Kenny's
committee.

It calls for a hardening of border security on the Canadian side _
arming of border agents, like their U.S. counterparts, and giving the
minister of public safety authority to expedite border infrastructure
construction and the right to eminent domain in the name of national
security.

And last week, Chertoff and his counterparts from Canada and Mexico
met in Ottawa to pledge better integration of terrorist watchlists
and other measures to counter threats against the "three friends
living in the same neighborhood."

Yet tightening rules along the border is rarely easy. This spring the
Bush administration first proposed, then held up, a plan to require
passports of everyone entering the United States from Mexico,
Bermuda, the Caribbean, Panama and Canada. The latter nation is the
largest U.S. trading partner, with more than a billion dollars worth
of goods crossing the border daily.

"If people have to have a passport, it's going to disrupt the honest
flow of traffic," President Bush said, backing off the plan, though
he added, "On the larger scale, we've got a lot to do to enforce the
border."

Much has already been done, of course. In the Blaine, Wash., border
sector, where the raspberry field tire tracks were found, 32 new
camera surveillance systems are online and 133 agents on staff, 2 1/2
times the number prior to Sept. 11.

Still, Eugene Davis, retired deputy chief of this Border Patrol
sector, frets: "We are still wide-open." In a letter to the Sept. 11
commission, he expressed fear that terrorists would exploit the
porous border.

Canada's welcoming immigration policies and limited border
enforcement have long been the subject of scrutiny from Americans,
who fear a terrorist claiming refugee status could lie in wait to
carry out a mission down south.

That threat still exists, says David Harris, former chief of
strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service,
Canada's counterpart to the CIA. Harris asserts more than 50
terrorist organizations have a presence in Canada.

"Canada has essentially said, if you put your foot in Canada and you
declare yourself a (Geneva Convention) refugee, then by and large you
are," says Harris, who now heads a security firm. "All of that has
implications; it means that we're quite susceptible to penetration."

People worry about penetration all along the border.

At the mile-and-a-half-long Ambassador Bridge, vehicles are not
inspected before they embark from either country; as with other
border spans, that only happens once they reach customs officers at
the opposite end.

Skip McMahon, a spokesman for Detroit International Bridge Co., the
private owner, declines to spell out safety measures taken since
Sept. 11 but says "we have hardened our assets. We have employed
armed guards on and around our bridge 24 hours a day, seven days a
week."

Concerned citizens, he says, should get both federal governments to
move on a proposal for inspections of suspicious cargo before
vehicles cross.

Canada has one of the most democratic, multicultural societies in the
world. Instead of closing doors to immigrants post-Sept. 11, the
nation continues to encourage foreigners to come and work. Critics
caution that welcoming some 250,000 new immigrants and refugees each
year potentially opens the door to terrorists.

"Canada's the only country that I would say hasn't significantly
tightened up," says Martin Collacott, Canada's former ambassador to
Syria and Lebanon and once director general for security services and
counterterrorism within the ministry of foreign affairs.

He describes the refugee system as "dysfunctional." A Canadian
government report this year notes that refugee claims can be delayed
up to two years, meaning potentially dangerous applicants can
disappear.

Though not a refugee, Fateh Kamel, suspected former ringleader of an
Islamic extremist group, easily returned to Montreal in January after
serving a prison term in France for terrorist plots there. His
Canadian passport (he holds Algerian-Canadian citizenship) gave
officials no choice but to admit him _ though some lawmakers have
since suggested his citizenship be revoked.

The case has parallels to that of Despres, the naturalized American
with the chain saw, who authorities said violated no immigration rule.

About 1,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents work along the U.S.-Canada
border, roughly triple the 2001 force but a fraction of the 9,600
agents who patrol the Mexican border, about half as long at 1,900
miles.

On the Canadian side, no single agency specifically patrols the
border. Rather, it is monitored by 23 enforcement teams, consisting
of officers of the 4,500-member Canada Border Services Agency,
supplemented by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and local police
departments.

Most of Canada's 160 land and maritime border crossings are staffed
by only one guard, unarmed for now. Long stretches between official
entry points go unmanned.

On both sides of the border, mountaintop forests and island-dotted
waterways harbor hidden nooks where helicopters, motorboats, even
kayaks drop off or collect drugs.

Recalling a highly publicized terrorist case, U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agent Peter Ostrovsky says, "We're lucky that
Ahmed Ressam did not hook up with Canadians smuggling contraband into
the country."

Ressam, with ties to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, was arrested
in 1999 in Port Angeles, Wash., as he drove off a ferry from Canada.
Customs agents, suspicious of his nervous behavior, searched his
trunk and found explosives. Ressam, who had been living in Montreal,
was convicted of plotting a blast at the Los Angeles airport.

Last August, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security added a small
air and marine operations branch south of Blaine to help police 200
miles of water dividing the United States and Canada. In October, a
similar base opened in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and branches are planned
for Michigan, North Dakota and Montana.

Kenny, the Canadian Senate security committee chairman, wants customs
agents on his side of the border to focus more on pulling over other
potential Ressams for secondary questioning, rather than nabbing
commuters for smuggling in consumer goods.

"We've got to change the culture of having tax collectors to front-
line country protectors," he says.

Kenny's committee has found successes post-Sept. 11, such as Canada's
modernizing of surveillance technology to identify ships heading to
its ports. It praises the government for raising military spending
and improving cooperation with the United States.

The friendship between the countries has a potent symbol in downtown
Blaine. Peace Arch Park, 20 acres dotted with picnic benches and
swing sets, straddles the international line. People from both
nations may meander through its gardens _ so long as they go home at
day's end.

Many don't.

Palestinian Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, convicted in 1998 of plotting to
bomb a New York subway, illegally entered the United States this way.

On June 29, 1996, six days after he'd been caught crossing the border
farther east, Mezer jogged through the park. A Border Patrol agent
stopped him and returned him to Canada, where he had a pending
immigration application. He would return to the United States months
later, again crossing the Washington border.

Directly across from Peace Arch Park on the Canadian side is the home
of 84-year-old Dorothy Kristjanson. She recalls watching a whole
family illegally crossing, heading south; another time, a burglar
going north dropped backpacks on her porch and fled.

"It's something that happens every day," she said one recent
morning. "If I see somebody go by here with a backpack and I say, `Uh-
oh, he looks cagey,' I'll phone (authorities) and say, `Keep an eye
on that guy.'"

But she isn't too concerned.

"You know," she said, "the border's pretty safe."

Safer, anyway, many officials contend.

A few months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Canada adopted a new anti-
terrorism act and a "smart border" plan with Washington intended to
increase security while permitting the flow of commerce and some
300,000 people across the border each day. Today, U.S. and Canadian
screeners work jointly at eight major airports.

In 2003, a new agency _ Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Canada _ was created, a counterpart to the U.S. Homeland Security
department.

A program that identifies low-risk frequent travelers and gives them
speedier crossings has enrolled 76,000 people. An additional 54,000
truckers have been screened for faster passage.

"Security has increased dramatically," says Danny Yen, a spokesman
for the Canada Border Services Agency. "It's not only on the program
side, but also on the intelligence side."

In Blaine, the Border Patrol's Joe Giuliano believes security is
greater but speaks pragmatically:

"Am I going to tell you I've hermetically sealed this border? No,
that's not true. I can put a million agents out there and have them
run willy-nilly across the border catching every