BLAINE, Wash. - With official attention in Washington riveted on the U.S.-Mexican border, crime along the USA’s undefended border with Canada is climbing to levels surpassing the rum-running days of Prohibition.

From the moose wallows of Maine to the raspberry fields of Washington state, border authorities are wrestling with these problems:

For 18 months, shipments of the $7,000-a-pound British Columbia marijuana known as "B.C. Bud" have been deluging the West Coast. The popular drug is so potent that dealers trade it pound for pound for cocaine, U.S. Border Patrol agents say. One means of transporting B.C. Bud: sea kayak.
(Ed. note: Now the price is up to $7,000 and it is "so potent" that it is just like cocaine! Wow! Do we snort it or shoot it up?)

The arrest in New York City of a suspected terrorist who had entered the U.S. from Canada has spotlighted the Ottawa government’s willingness to offer political asylum to radicals fleeing the Middle East. The suspect, when discovered, was building a bomb, allegedly to plant in the subway. Some congressmen now worry that more would-be terrorists will try to infiltrate from Canada. Aliens from Asia who are smuggled into the United States from Canada are drowning in the St. Lawrence and Niagara rivers.

Some Mohawk Indians exploit their 11,000-resident reservation’s strategic position on New York’s border with Ontario and Quebec. At least 12 times since 1994, arrest reports in both countries have alleged Mohawks’ involvement in smuggling drugs and people to the United States as well as cigarettes and liquor to Canada to evade that country’s high taxes. Last month, a former Mohawk chief was indicted by federal prosecutors for racketeering.

Smuggled merchandise ranging from Beanie Babies to embargoed Iranian carpets is crossing the porous frontier, and inspectors say they’re seizing 10% of it at best. "Not to denigrate the war on drugs, but we have the war on rugs," says Tom Leupp, chief Border Patrol agent in Swanton, Vt.

For decades, the 4,000-mile border was the peaceful domain of migrating moose and pleasure-seeking tourists. Canadians and Americans still breeze through border crossings without filling out documents or showing proof of citizenship. Most tourists are asked a few polite questions by inspectors as they sit in their cars at checkpoints, then go on their way.

But troubles are mounting. Although the northern boundary remains far less violent than the U.S.-Mexican border, there has been an upswing in alien smuggling and drug crimes. The Border Patrol apprehended almost twice as many illegal aliens in 1997 than in 1988, and marijuana confiscations jumped 87% from 1996 to 1997.
(Ed. note: It is easy to get large percentage increases in small absolute numbers. See below.)

Now, overworked Border Patrol agents are pleading for reinforcements to guard vast expanses of woods and farm fields along the border, often marked only by an occasional boundary stone. A Senate committee last month urged the Border Patrol to deploy more agents along the Canadian border; for now, only 291 of the Border Patrol’s 7,700 agents are assigned to the Canadian line.

What finally turned Congress’ attention northward was the specter of international terrorism. Several recent arrests have brought home the possibility that terrorists are establishing themselves in Canada, because of that government’s relatively easy-going attitude toward asylum, then slipping into the USA:

Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, 24, a Palestinian from Israel, won refugee status in Canada and kept it despite two criminal convictions there. Arrested three times by the Border Patrol while trying to sneak into Washington state here at Blaine, the major crossing point in the west, he was freed by an immigration judge pending a deportation hearing.

Then, in July, 1997, New York police arrested him and another Palestinian as they allegedly were within hours of pipe-bombing the city’s subways. Mezer is on trial in Brooklyn on federal conspiracy charges.

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani charged the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service with negligence. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich blamed the trouble on Mezer’s "easy entry into Canada" and a shortage of Border Patrol agents in the Northwest.

"We got him three times," says Gene Davis, deputy Border Patrol chief here. "What bothers me about the Mezer case is, how many times did we not get him - or others?"

Tracking terrorists

Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh, 29, fled to Canada from Saudi Arabia after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. airmen. While Canadian authorities were considering asylum, they got a Saudi tip that Sayegh had driven a signaling car in the attack. Canada deported him to the United States after he agreed to provide information. He later reneged on his plea bargain and is being held in a federal detention center.

Canada accepted Mohammed Hussein al-Husseini in 1991, but returned him to his native Lebanon in 1994 after he admitted membership in the Iran-financed Hezbollah organization and said a Hezbollah support network was active in Canada. Hezbollah has been linked to terrorist attacks against Israel and the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon. A member of the Abu Nidal gang tried to enter the United States at Champlain, N.Y. in January, 1996, with false documents. Yousef Khalid Salem, 41, was deported to Lebanon.

The FBI declined to discuss the terrorist threat from Canada. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s equivalent of the CIA, has been more forthright. In April, the intelligence agency reported, "Most of the world’s terrorist groups have established themselves in Canada, seeking safe haven, setting up operational bases and attempting to gain access to the USA."

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House immigration subcommittee, cites Canada’s "chilling" asylum record as a reason to preserve a controversial 1996 immigration law that would make crossing the border far more complicated.

Though the technology isn’t ready, the measure requires the INS to install by Oct. 1 a nationwide computerized system matching an entry document from every visiting alien with an exit document as the alien leaves the United States. Canadians who like the current system want an exemption from the new paperwork, saying the law was aimed at tracking visa overstayers and wouldn’t block terrorism.

Knowing "who’s coming in, why they’re coming and how long they’re staying" would help track terrorists, Smith responds. As for Canadians’ sensibilities, it’s "fairness and equity" to make them complete the same forms Mexicans will. "The time has come to treat both borders the same," he says.

If Smith prevails, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says, the result could be titanic traffic backups for American citizens and noncitizens alike, as resentful Canadians fill out the new entry and exit forms.

An imbalance in border policing

Powerful Texans and Californians in Congress have dictated border policing efforts for years, pressuring federal agencies to deploy most of its resources on the Southwest.

The 291 Border Patrol agents assigned to the Canadian boundary monitor the terrain between border checkpoints, the 90 northern crossings staffed by customs and immigration inspectors. The crossings include both busy locations such as Detroit and Buffalo and quiet stations such as Sweetgrass, Mont.

Many of the smaller ports of entry are unstaffed at night, so agents must rely on remote sensors, tips from farmers and their friendships with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to track night crossers.

In pending appropriations bills, Congress is recognizing the imbalances. The Senate Appropriations Committee told the INS to "begin deploying" more Border Patrol agents outside of the Southwest. But every dollar allocated for new construction projects in the committee’s bill - lights, fences, roads and Border Patrol stations - goes to the boundary with Mexico.

Northern-based federal crime fighters chafe at their backwater status. Steve Casteel, who heads the Drug Enforcement Administration regional office in the Pacific Northwest, says he feels like "the right fielder on a Little League team."

Raw statistics don’t yet justify a massive reallocation of resources. The 16,344 illegal aliens caught in northern Border Patrol sectors in fiscal 1997 would represent only 1% of the 1,368,707 arrests on the Mexico border.

The 1,487 pounds of hydroponically grown B.C. Bud seized at Blaine last year were a big deal here, but the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas, seized 113,272 pounds of marijuana in that period.
(Ed. note: Blaine is the major crossing point between Vancouver and Seattle, and the total was only a little more than one percent of McAllen!)

Border Patrol agent Ray Gaudreau, of Swanton, Vt., says his area’s biggest shortfall isn’t more agents. What is needed, Gaudreau says, is money to put arrested aliens on planes for distant homelands. Now, they may be sent back to Canada, free to try again.

In the Southwest, 90% of arrested illegal entrants are Mexicans. In steady annual numbers, the north in the 1990s has recorded arrests of 110 nationalities, including Turks, Kazakhs, Russians, Chinese, Punjabi Indians and Pakistanis.

Thousands of mainland Chinese have been smuggled to Canada with false documents, paying up to $70,000 for the complete travel package. Buying time in Canada by making phony asylum claims, many Chinese ultimately filter down to New York City sweatshops and restaurants, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Fred Bowen says.

About half of would-be illegal entrants from Canada sign up with smuggling rings. They often can be cruelly incompetent.

A Malaysian woman being ferried to Youngstown, N.Y., in a flimsy inflatable raft drowned in the icy Niagara River in 1989.

In 1996, 51-year-old Naseem Taj of Pakistan died when St. Lawrence River waves swamped her overcrowded boat crossing the smuggling-plagued Akwesasne Mohawk reservation.

"Canada lets everybody in, and two days later they’re coming down here," Gaudreau says. A few years ago, Canada lifted visa requirements for tourists from South Korea and Costa Rica. Within weeks, the Border Patrol began seeing waves of illegal immigrants from those countries.

Proud of its tradition of haven, Canada approves 40% of political asylum applications, compared to the 17% approved by the United States. But the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board’s Rachel Labelle says Ottawa is getting a bad rap over terrorism.

Canada bars known terrorists. Last year, immigration judges rejected 775 applicants from Israel, mainly Palestinians, approving only 21.

Experts differ on the scope of the terrorist threat from Canada, which has become home to radical Indian Sikhs, Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers and Algerian fundamentalists.

The publicized recent cases "may be the tip of a significant iceberg," says former CSIS strategic planning chief David Harris, a former Canadian intelligence official and now president of Insignis Strategic Research in Ottawa.