Casual Border Crossing Throws a Life in Limbo

Yes, this is the United States, but mostly it’s Canadians around here. They speak French, spend Canadian dollars, watch French-Canadian TV and use phones with the 418 Quebec area code.

The American hamlet of Estcourt, pop. 4, is more like a neighborhood where the Quebec town of Pohenegamook, pop. 3,097, touches Maine’s North Woods. Canadians pass into Estcourt to get to logging jobs in the woods, to pick fiddleheads or blueberries in season, to visit friends.

Doing so, they cross the all-but-invisible border dividing the United States from Canada.

For as long as anyone can remember, nobody gave much thought to the border -- but they’re giving it a lot of thought now. And many are worried that life here may never be the same. Crossing the border now can turn your life upside-down, as it did Michel Jalbert’s.

The border parallels Frontier Street, the only real road hereabouts, and cuts through people’s bedrooms, kitchens and backyard gardens. It crosses the dirt driveway leading to Ouellet’s Gaz Bar, a two-pump station where Canadians go for cheap fuel -- and where, last Oct. 11, two U.S. Border Patrol agents had set up surveillance.

That afternoon, Jalbert was heading home after a hard day’s work clearing brush in the Canadian woods. He steered his green 1984 Jeep Cherokee under a railroad pass to Frontier Street, hung a right and then a left to the Gaz Bar.

He ignored a sign to check in at the U.S. Customs office, which was closed at the time.

A stream of vehicles with Canadian plates lined up for gas that is 20 to 30 cents a gallon cheaper than across the border. Jalbert pumped his, paid with $15 in Canadian money and told the attendant, “Merci.” Then he headed out the station’s driveway.

Ten feet of dirt separated Jalbert from Canada when he was stopped.

Border Patrol agents Christopher Cantrell and Pedro Hernandez had been watching from behind the gas station. To reach Ouellet’s, they had driven over private dirt logging roads through the North Woods of Maine.

They stopped Jalbert apparently at random, then spotted the gun between the seats. It was partridge-hunting season in Canada, and Jalbert had a .20-gauge shotgun in hopes of bagging a bird. He didn’t get one.

He said he was just a hunter. His pregnant wife and 5-year-old daughter were waiting at home, half a mile away in Pohenegamook.

But to the agents, he was an illegal alien in possession of a firearm.

He was handcuffed and taken into custody. The agents’ vehicle turned away from the border and followed logging roads again on the four-hour trip to Houlton, Maine, where the suspect was delivered to jail and spent 35 days.

Jalbert is awaiting trial March 11 on charges that carry a maximum sentence of 20 1/2 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.

“What’s happening?” he wondered that October day.

Many others have asked that question since.

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The case comes at a time when security is being beefed up along the porous 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border, and a crackdown is on against all lawbreakers -- not just terrorists. Nobody is exempt from U.S. border laws, officials say.

But others suggest that imprisoning a local for doing what has always been done -- on a road that leads nowhere except to a gas station -- is a symptom of a system gone awry.

And some point out that a recent report by the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, that found it was so lax at some border points that U.S. agents didn’t even ask for ID.

Jalbert’s attorney accuses the government of outrageous conduct.

“This gas station is part of the Canadian community and surrounded by woods as far as the eye can see,” said Jon Haddow, a lawyer in Bangor. “Dragging him through the federal judicial process, for something that has gone on for years, to me seems extreme.”

The Border Patrol declines to discuss Jalbert’s case specifically. But officials say their job is to protect the border -- period.

“Arresting people who enter the United States without proper paperwork, that’s what we do,” said Monte Bennett, assistant chief patrol agent in the agency’s office in Houlton.

Prosecutors say Jalbert, 33, not only was in the country illegally, he had a gun and a criminal record. (He was convicted in 1990 of breaking and entering and possession of stolen property, but served no jail time.) He was charged with two felonies: being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and a felon in possession of a firearm.

They say he ignored two previous warnings about failing to check in at U.S. Customs in Estcourt.

Sentencing guidelines recommend a penalty much lighter than the maximum if he’s convicted. But as trial approaches, the prospect of jail looms.

“It could be six or seven months in prison, just to gas up,” Jalbert said in French.

Dozens of articles in newspapers in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Quebec have lambasted the prosecution. During a visit to Canada, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called Jalbert’s arrest “an unfortunate incident,” but not part of a pattern.

People in Estcourt and Pohenegamook are not reassured.

“They’re ... surprised and afraid,” said Guy Leblanc, a Pohenegamook town councilor who works at the Canadian Customs office on Frontier Street. “Because they’ve always gone to the Gaz Bar for gas, or to pick blueberries, or to go fishing in the river. But now they’re afraid of getting arrested.”

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All of this takes some getting used to -- because there is perhaps no place in the country quite like Estcourt, the northernmost point in the United States east of the Great Lakes.

The border here was established by the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty, but it was neglected, even ignored, over the years. When it was retraced early in the last century, surveyors discovered that several homes were built on the dividing line.

The U.S. halves of those homes, plus four that are entirely in Maine, make up Estcourt.

The border runs through Edmond and Germaine Levesque’s kitchen, allowing them to eat in different countries but at the same table. Overnight guests sleep with their heads in Canada and their toes in the United States. The border is painted in black up the side of their house in jest. They, and others like them, pay taxes to both Maine and Quebec.

Estcourt has no post office, no town offices, no church, no restaurant. It does have a one-man U.S. Customs office -- open from 5 or 6 a.m. to 1 or 2 p.m. Monday through Friday -- where people are required to report when entering Maine.

In addition to Ouellet’s, Estcourt has the Magasin General Americain, a tiny shop that sells tobacco, souvenirs and candy bars.

At both Ouellet’s and the Americain store, business is off by 50% or more.

“They’re scared to come because they’re afraid the same thing will happen to them that happened to Jalbert,” Rita Sirois, who runs the store with her husband, said in French.

Canadian snowplow drivers are reluctant to plow to Phil Dumond’s driveway, which is about 200 feet inside Maine. And Dumond, a retired Maine game warden, said friends won’t come to his house to play cards at night, when the Customs office is closed.

Yvette Gagne, whose house sits about five feet inside Maine, said that even her brother won’t visit since Jalbert’s arrest. Gagne has lived in Estcourt nearly 50 years.

Three times as many people now check in at the U.S. Customs station as did before Jalbert’s arrest, a customs agent said. But the office is still open only until 2 p.m. at the latest, while the gas station doesn’t close until 5 p.m.

A Customs Service letter, dated June 18, 1990, seemed to address the dilemma. “For the present we are satisfied to let things remain as they are, i.e., no reporting if the customers are coming to buy gas and return to Canada,” it said.

“The letter said it was OK to get gas,” Jalbert reasoned. “We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

His lawyer argued that the letter amounted to “official permission.”

But Sept. 11, 2001, changed many old assumptions.

U.S. Customs spokesman James Michie said the letter no longer applies. New regulations were put in place after the terrorist attacks.

“The gas station owner has been advised if any of his patrons want to know what they should do, just as the signs say, they need to report to our U.S. Customs station,” Michie said.

U.S. Congress has made border security a high priority and encouraged agencies to come down hard on violators.

The Border Patrol has transferred 245 agents from the Mexican to the Canadian border since the terrorist attacks, and anticipates adding another 285 agents before fall. It now has 550 agents on the northern border, a 64% increase from its pre-Sept. 11 strength.

Seated in his small rented bungalow in Pohenegamook, Jalbert said he thinks that the Border Patrol used him as an example. The message: Casual border crossings will no longer be tolerated. Other locals say the agents were newly transferred from the southern border and showed no respect for the traditions of the area.

The Border Patrol won’t answer those accusations.

For now, Jalbert just wants to get the case behind him.

It has cost him $2,000 in lost wages, phone bills that could top $2,000 and lawyer fees approaching $10,000. That’s a lot of money for somebody who makes $400 a week, who has an empty bank account and whose wife is expecting a baby in late February. Jalbert’s father, who drives a truck and owns a motel in Pohenegamook, put up his $5,000 bail.

Jalbert takes heart from dozens of letters of support he has gotten from Canada and even the United States.

One letter was from Ross Paradis, a state representative from northern Maine, who said the Border Patrol lacked common sense in arresting the Canadian woodsman.

“You don’t antagonize friends,” Paradis said. “The United States has enough enemies without making new ones.”

Jalbert has also received more than $500 in contributions. But there’s one thing he knows that he won’t spend that money on: cheap American gas.