U.S.-Canada Border to Be Scrutinized

The continental U.S.-Canada border--a barely guarded, 4,000-mile frontier between neighbors that rarely even get into a spat--is in line for an infusion of agents, inspectors and surveillance technology after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The sprawling northern boundary has long been an afterthought compared to America’s turbulent border with Mexico, the site of most illegal immigration into the United States. But after the attacks, Congress might triple the number of Border Patrol agents to 1,000 and the number of immigration inspectors stationed near Canada to about 1,500.

Under anti-terrorist legislation moving forward in the House, lawmakers also will consider approving $50 million for equipment such as cameras, sensors and night-vision goggles to catch those attempting to slip across the northern border. Senators, too, are planning to increase resources to better patrol the Canadian boundary.

“The northern border has long been neglected, and terrorist organizations can very easily penetrate a border that has no one watching it,” said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that will hold a hearing on the matter today.

U.S. authorities now close some U.S.-Canadian posts late at night with orange cones rather than government employees, Dorgan said in an interview.

“If you’re going to provide the security you need in this country, you have to secure our border and prevent the wrong people from coming in--and you can’t do that with an orange rubber cone after 10 o’clock at night,” he said.

The push for greater security to the north reflects a striking change in approach to a boundary treated so casually that snowboarders have been known to accidentally glide right over it. In recent years, however, Canada increasingly has been viewed as a haven for terrorists, raising concerns about the border.

At least one individual being questioned about last month’s attacks, and another who was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport around New Year’s Day 2000, tried to enter the U.S. from Canada.

Proposals to tighten enforcement along the U.S.-Canada line “would be a significant shift,” said Deborah Meyers, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute and co-author of a book on border communities. “But I’m not sure, quite frankly, that it will make a huge difference in the way people are hoping it will.”

Indeed, analysts questioned whether added resources alone would end the U.S. vulnerability to terrorist infiltration from Canada, unless the added resources were combined with much closer cooperation between the two nations. They noted the importance of greater intelligence, more efficient sharing of information between the two nations, and other forms of new cooperation to thwart terrorists from breaching the perimeter of North America.

On Tuesday, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and Canadian Solicitor Gen. Lawrence MacAuley renewed their pledge to cooperate in the battle against terrorism. But the sheer vastness of the northern border also seemed to give Ashcroft pause. “Any time there are borders that are that open and that substantial, there are risks,” he said.

The spotlight on the north is relatively new, as the government’s allocation of resources makes strikingly clear.

“There are as many Border Patrol agents in Brownsville, Texas, as there are on the entire U.S.-Canadian border,” said Stephen E. Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Proposals to increase personnel and technology, he said, mean “we’re going from virtually nothing to a little bit more.”

According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, about 1.5 million people a year have been blocked from crossing unlawfully into the United States from Mexico in recent years. The number apprehended at the U.S.-Canadian line has hovered between 12,000 and 13,000.

But dozens of terrorist groups, including those with ties to Osama bin Laden, reportedly have a presence in Canada, which has long maintained a liberal policy of political asylum.

Among those arrested since the Sept. 11 attacks is a man identified as Nabil Al-Marabh, a former Toronto resident originally from Kuwait who is suspected of having ties to the hijackers. Al-Marabh, who apparently had lived in Boston and Detroit, had driver’s licenses from Ontario and Massachusetts and was certified to transport hazardous materials by truck.

On Dec. 14, 1999, U.S. Customs officials arrested Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national attempting to enter the United States at Port Angeles, Wash., with a carload of explosives. He was convicting of plotting to bomb LAX.

And Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a Palestinian later convicted of planning to bomb the New York City subway system, was caught three times in the 1990s trying to enter the United States from Canada.

In 1996, Congress sought to clamp down on all U.S. borders, which would have required the INS to impose a new system of documenting every foreigner entering or exiting the United States. But that mandate was fiercely opposed by border states, business interests and Canadian officials, fearful that it would cause paralyzing congestion at the northern border. In May 2000, Congress eased the requirement, which it had already postponed.

“The concern wasn’t with the idea of such a system; it was whether it could be implemented without creating very long backlogs at the borders,” said Theresa Brown, manager of labor and immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Since Sept. 11, more thorough checks, along with the suspension of expedited crossings for frequent travelers, have caused enormous traffic jams at some northern border posts.

“If we’re going to have increased scrutiny--and people understand that--we need to make sure the resources are there to do this,” Brown said.