July 10, 2007, - 3:25 pm
How Can We Secure Our Borders . . .
By
. . . If we don’t even know where they are? From today’s Wall Street Journal front page, “As for Canada, Finding the Border is a Bit of a Trick“:
“They talk about securing the border, well, nobody ever came to talk to us,” Mr. Hipsley [Kyle Hipsley, deputy chief of the U.S. section of the International Boundary Commission, charged with keeping up the U.S. border with Canada] said. He circled around Lake Memphremagog, just west of Beebe Plain, turned north up a dirt road and stopped at a border gate with a rusty padlock on it. “That’s what we don’t understand. What could be the most basic thing you’d think of? How can you protect it if you can’t see it?”
Mr. Hipsley got out of the car and jumped the gate. “That’ll shake ’em up,” he said. “Border Patrol will be here in a minute.”
He knew the roadway had sensors buried in it, products of heightened post-9/11 vigilance. There were cameras in the trees, too. But where the road fell off into a gully running down to the lake, the undergrowth was 10 feet high. “If you have a camera up on a pole, nobody’s going to see you,” Mr. Hipsley said. “There’s no way. You just walk on through.”
Between 2001 and 2006, the Border Patrol caught 56,883 people sneaking into the U.S. from Canada. Most came from countries where a Canadian visa is easier to get than an American one. In this sector, a 295-mile stretch from New Hampshire to Ogdensburg, N.Y., the patrol caught 12,334. With instructions from a smuggler, the interlopers usually tramp through the brush to a waiting car. Once, Mr. Hipsley ran into a family of Russians at this very spot. They were looking for a bus ride to New York City.
So, how many didn’t the Border Patrol catch?
Tags: Canada, Debbie Schlussel, deputy chief, deputy chief of the U.S., International Boundary Commission, Kyle Hipsley, Lake Memphremagog, New Hampshire, New York, New York City, Northern border, Ogdensburg, U.S. border, United States, Wall Street Journal
That bus full of smuggled aliens drops them off next to the ICE HQ in DC, too.
code7 on July 10, 2007 at 5:53 pm