[LINK] "Beefed up at the border"

[rfmcdonald]

Andrew Chungs' article in The Sunday Star, "Beefed up at the border", takes a look at the often-intrusive Department of Homeland Security's actions on the US-Canadian border.

Most Canadians are aware of stepped-up security at border crossings or at the airport. The Border Patrol is eager to show how the same is happening everywhere in between.

In the change room at the tidy Champlain Border Patrol station, a sticker decorates a locker door: "Terrorist Hunting Permit," it reads. "Permit No. 91101."

"Nine/eleven really opened the eyes of people in the U.S., and Canada," Richard Labounty, a Border Patrol supervisor, says of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. "It's one of our most important missions, to apprehend terrorists and terrorist weapons."

[. . .]

A back-road tour with soft-spoken Labounty shows that the other remote routes that lead to Canada are, like Matott's, blocked off. The gates in place are not the Berlin Wall, but Labounty explains they are backed up by a growing array of surveillance cameras and sensors – be they motion, seismic, metal or infrared.

Labounty insists the Border Patrol is gaining "operational control." The idea is that every illegal entry "will come to a law enforcement conclusion at the border."

Champlain now has 34 agents, about double the number it had when Labounty arrived nine years ago from the southern border, where all officers are first assigned. Space is getting tight; a new station will be needed soon.

In 2001, there were just 340 Border Patrol agents assigned to the U.S.-Canada boundary. There will be over 1,800 agents by next year, a near sixfold increase.

The majority of people coming into the United States are from countries other than Canada. Labounty hauls out last year's worn logbook. "They're from everywhere imaginable," he says, flipping through the pages. India, Pakistan, Burundi, Iran – each country of origin is meticulously written in ink. Any narcotics are also noted.

He's surprisingly sympathetic toward the illegals, given the gruff reputation of border authorities and his own emphasis on stopping terrorists. "You may feel bad for them, for the country they came from," he says. "But you have to do your job."

The article doesn't say much that I don't already know, but it's a good enough primer to the situation.