Debbie Schlussel: Northern Border Neglect is Alarming
For those reading this site, the gaping holes at the Northern border are no surprise. We documented one in upstate New York, at which boaters were expected, on the honor system, to alert authorities they were entering U.S. waters and shores.
And for all the panning it rightfully deserved, even Michael Moore's phony "Fahrenheit 9/11" showed the same problems at the Northern border.
Where is Michael Chertoff and Homeland Security, including Border Patriol sachem David Aguilar when it comes to the Northern border? Nowhere to be found.
Today, USA Today has yet another disturbing article on the neglected Northern border. The most alarming part is at the end. It echoes what my friend, Border Patrol Agent Robert Lindemann said after 9/11 (and nearly lost him job for saying):
[A]gent Darryl Schermerhorn, who works in northwest Washington state, says the equipment the Border Patrol relies on now is nearly useless in some cases. Cameras along the border are poorly placed and often fog up or shake, the ground sensors fail, and the old four-wheel-drives and ATVs break down. He added that there are too few agents to read camera images and to patrol remote areas.If a camera does pick up someone crossing a remote road, by the time an agent can get there to check it out, the person is long gone — into the United States.
"It happens all the time," Schermerhorn says. He says the agents on the northern border are no better off in terms of protecting the country than they were on 9/11.
"If someone has a vested interest in getting in here," he says, "they'd probably be better off coming across the northern border."
Here are some other disquieting excerpts that really are nothing new, but remain unaddressed by failed Chertoff:
Along slim sections of the nation's vast northern border, anyone can drive the back roads that flow from Canada into the United States. So it's only natural for Caribou (Maine) Police Chief Michael Gahagan to be concerned that terrorists could be in some of those cars."It worries us every day," Gahagan says. . . .
[I]t's still easy to cross illegally, across hundreds of small back roads, through the woods or over the mountains. . . .
Intelligence officials long have said the northern border is no less of a security concern when it comes to the potential for terrorists to sneak in to the United States.
Homeland Security Department chief intelligence officer Charles Allen won't talk about classified intelligence reports, but he says not a day goes by when he doesn't worry about the northern border.
The arrests in Canada last June of 17 alleged terrorists with 3 tons of ammonium nitrate, the same kind of fertilizer used to make the deadly Oklahoma City bomb in 1995, intensified those concerns in Allen's department and at police stations along the border. . . .
But what did they do about it? Nothing. I know for a fact that Muslims from Dearbornistan have been smuggling people in their car trunks into the U.S. at the Detroit border crossings for years. Unfortunately, Dearbornistan's illegal alien smuggling investigations are largely off-limits to ICE agents, per policy of ICE Special Agent in Charge of Michigan/Ohio Brian Moskowitz a/k/a "Abu Moskowitz."
Additionally, Customs and Border Protection agents at the border cannot do adequate inspections because they are constantly forced to "speed up" traffic at the Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge, for example, by bridge owner Manuel "Matty" Moroun.
Local police such as Gahagan say that although security at official points of entry - including at big, busy crossings such as Detroit and Buffalo - has tightened considerably, there are still hundreds of easily accessible routes into the USA. . . .Smugglers, who are paid up to $10,000 per person to get people across the border, drop illegal immigrants in the woods with a Global Positioning System [GPS] device so the person picking them up can easily find them, Gahagan says.
This was one of the true-life plot points in the just concluded second season of Showtime's "Sleeper Cell" (only in reverse--an Islamic terrorist escapes to Canada through the Northern border, and his girlfriend finds him via GPS.
Safer than before 9/11? More like, far less safe. So much for President Bush's "beefed-up" border security.
Where's the beef?
Posted by Debbie on December 18, 2006 10:36 AM to Debbie Schlussel