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 News from Around the Americas | July 2006 
At the Northern US Border, No Talk of Fences
 John Pomfret - Washington Post
| | Some in Canada have been wary of the long arm of American justice. |
U.S. and Canada Collaborate to Enforce Law
Blaine, Wash. - Royal Canadian Mounted Police agents watched from a clifftop as a helicopter swooped down in a Canadian field, picked up more than 300 pounds of marijuana from a waiting truck and skimmed across the border into the United States.
Federal agents in Washington state's Okanogan County, in constant radio contact with the Mounties, were waiting when the helicopter dropped its illicit load in a wildlife area. The U.S. agents arrested two men who had scooped up the dope, and the Canadians were waiting when the chopper landed back in British Columbia, arresting the pilot and another man.
The closely coordinated investigation, announced by authorities last week, was about more than busting a drug-smuggling ring, however. U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials said it highlighted the increasingly close and institutionalized cooperation between the two nations' police agencies. Such joint operations, called "parallel investigations" because of sensitivity about sovereignty issues, also reflect the fundamentally different strategies used to secure the United States' two very different borders since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Along the border in Texas, local police departments have claimed to see Mexican army troops protecting drug smugglers, a claim the Mexicans deny. Corruption has been common among some Mexican police. The United States has constructed walls and fences and stationed National Guard troops along the border to keep out illegal immigrants.
Along the Canadian border, there are no plans for fences, and efforts focus on smuggling and terrorism. U.S. and Canadian authorities are patrolling together on the Great Lakes and have plans to operate a joint radio network. In a real-life repeat of the 1990s TV show "Due South" that featured a well-mannered Mountie and a hard-bitten Chicago cop, American agents and their Canadian counterparts have begun to investigate cases on each other's soil.
Americans and Canadians also share law enforcement intelligence. U.S. agents aided the Canadians in their investigation into an alleged terrorist plot stymied on June 3 with the arrest of 17 men and teenagers in Ontario, law enforcement officials said.
Five years ago, only Canadians worked at the Mounted Police headquarters in Ottawa, said Joe Oliver, a Canadian police superintendent. Now, Americans representing four agencies are based there, he said, adding that cooperation is "pervasive."
Just a few years ago, cross-border law enforcement cooperation was difficult and ad hoc. "You could get punished for improper disclosure to a foreign country," said Roy Hoffman, who runs the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Blaine. "You used to need a friend on the other side to work a case together with you. Now it's ingrained behavior."
The Washington drug-smuggling investigation, known as Operation Frozen Timber, began two years ago when law enforcement agencies learned that smuggling rings were using helicopters and small aircraft to move high-quality marijuana known as B.C. Bud from Canada and cocaine, firearms and bulk cash from the United States, said Leigh Winchell, special agent in charge of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office in Seattle. In July 2005, Playboy magazine interviewed pilots who bragged of making $125,000 a week running marijuana to the United States.
Winchell said U.S. and Canadian authorities identified suspects and infiltrated the organizations. They arranged wiretaps and pooled intelligence. Over time, agents arrested more than 40 people in the United States and six in Canada. Authorities also seized 8,000 pounds of marijuana, 800 pounds of cocaine, three aircraft and $1.5 million in U.S. currency. Three alleged smugglers were killed in two helicopter crashes in Canada.
"The ability of organizations to move contraband back and forth across the border is a national security issue, because these are people who figured out a mechanism to penetrate the U.S. and Canadian border," Winchell said. "Those small helicopters can move 250 pounds of marijuana at a time. But what does a suitcase carrying a dirty bomb weigh? Maybe 80."
Culture, the nature of the threat and geography have brought U.S. and Canadian law enforcement together. While there are many cities that sprawl across the Mexican border, they are usually divided by walls. But in most places, the U.S.-Canadian border is delineated by nothing more than a ditch or a clear-cut through a forest.
As of the end of April, only 950 Border Patrol agents were stationed along the 4,000-mile-long northern border while 10,200 patrolled the 1,920-mile-long boundary with Mexico. At scores of checkpoints across the northern border, when it's quitting time, an orange cone is the only thing stopping incursions -- although since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has invested billions to establish five air and marine stations, and to install sensors, cameras and other technology to firm up the northern frontier.
Border Patrol senior agent Bob Riffle, who worked on the Mexican border for a decade before transferring to Washington state, said the two borders have different cultures and had high praise for his Canadian counterparts. "I trust those guys implicitly," he said. "In Mexico, how can you have serious cooperation on a day-to-day level with guys who might have just robbed a group of illegals? It's a different world down there."
Law enforcement officials also say the nature of the threat demands that the two sides cooperate. As of the end of May, 829,109 illegal immigrants had been apprehended crossing from Mexico this year. Canada's numbers are a tiny fraction of that amount -- 4,066.
But a significant number concern American law enforcement. The only terrorist caught entering the United States, millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, came from Canada. Criminal gangs also traffic in Asian sex workers from Canada to the United States.
Some law enforcement officials, such as John McKay, the U.S. attorney in Seattle who prosecuted Ressam, are not satisfied with the level of cooperation. "The good news is it's improved," he said. "The bad news is it's not nearly as good as it should be."
When an FBI analysis raised the possibility in 2004 that the massive ferry system that plies Puget Sound had been scouted by potential terrorists, McKay remembers sitting in a meeting when someone asked, "Hey, has anyone called the Canadians about this?" "And everybody in the room stopped what they were doing, and blood ran cold," McKay said. "We're equally vulnerable. Why isn't there an RCMP constable sitting in the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Seattle?"
Canadian officials said a Mountie participates in the task force by invitation only.
McKay has lobbied to open up an experimental law enforcement database, called Linx, to Canadian law enforcement. "We have people who think if we shared sensitive law enforcement records with Canada, we would be giving up sovereignty, but we can't be secure unless we share information with Canada," he said.
Some in Canada have been wary of the long arm of American justice. In 2002, a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, was changing planes in New York when U.S. authorities detained him and spirited him to Syria, where he said he was imprisoned and tortured for nearly a year. Arar's charges that Canadian authorities assisted the United States in his detention caused an uproar in Canada.
On the American side, there are worries that Canada is not being vigilant enough. A recent State Department report called Canada's recently tightened immigration policy "liberal" and claimed Canada is a safe haven for militants.
One unintended consequence of the increase in cross-border cases is a crush of suspects being handed off to local prosecutors and warehoused in local jails. More than 85 percent of the cases made by federal agents in Whatcom County, in the northwest corner of Washington state, for example, are declined by the U.S. attorney and end up as state cases. As a result, Whatcom's jail, built to house 148 inmates, now has 280. People convicted of drunken driving are given tickets and are not incarcerated because the jail is packed, and people arrested for misdemeanors who do not show up for court dates "know there are no consequences," Sheriff Bill Elfo said.
Currently, 700 people in the county have been sentenced to jail but cannot serve their sentences because, he said, "there's no room at the inn." |
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