Subject: Re: U.S.-Canada Border Leaves Many Jittery
Date: Jul 04, 2005 @ 19:56
Author: aletheiak ("aletheiak" <aletheiak@...>)
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> U.S.-Canada Border Leaves Many Jitteryevery what
>
> 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