Author: Salim Jiwa, Staff Reporter, The Province

BORDER DEFENDED: $5M TO PLUG LEAKS

U.S. high-tech system attempts to stop smuggling on 49th

Alarmed by a huge jump in drugs and people smuggling and the threat of
infiltration by terrorists, the U.S. is installing state-of-the art spy
cameras along a 50-kilometre stretch of the Canada-U.S. border from
Blaine to Sumas.

U.S. Border Patrol Blaine sector chief Carey James said yesterday
fiber-optic cables will be hooked up to 28 cameras, which will be
monitored in the control room of the border patrol office.

"We are a test site for cameras linked by fibre-optic cable," James
told The Province yesterday.

"We are a week away from installing the conduit in the ground for the
fiber-optic system. It's a $5-million (US) project."

He said the cameras will have "day-and-night capability" and
eventually will be patched into an existing sensor system used to
detect border jumpers.

Both the U.S. Congress and Senate have grown worried about the leaky
border following the discovery of bomb-making equipment in the trunk of
a car driven by alleged terrorist Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested in
December at Port Angeles, Wash. after taking the ferry from Victoria.

Last month, three Washington state leaders -- Congressman Jack Metcalf
and Senators Slade Gordon and Patty Murray -- called on Immigration and
Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner to hire more border
patrol agents.

"Drug smuggling has exploded and last year's arrest of suspected
terrorist Ahmed Ressam illustrates that we must be vigilant at all our
northern points-of-entry," they wrote in a stinging letter to Meissner.

"Staffing should be quickly increased."

James noted that narcotics smuggling along the border has almost
doubled in a year.

U.S. border agents have seized more than 952 kilograms of marijuana
already this fiscal year with two months to go -- nearly twice as much
as in the entire last fiscal year.

Border officials estimate premium B.C. marijuana is fetching as much as
$6,000 US for 450 grams in the Los Angeles area. That would place the
street value of marijuana seized at the border so far this year to
close to $12 million US. Intelligence officials said July was a bonanza
month for marijuana seizures, with 150 kilograms confiscated from would-
be smugglers.

He said marijuana grow operations have proliferated in Canada, partly
because the penalties are more severe in the U.S.

Harsh penalties south of the border, including life in prison, have
prompted growers to do it in B.C., where they can get off with a slap
on the wrist from the justice system.

"In Canada, your penalties are very liberal, compared to what a person
would face here. It's not that we don't have the technology [to grow
high-THC content marijuana] -- but if a guy gets caught with as many
plants as some of your operations there, you can spend life in prison.

"But we in the United States look at marijuana as a serious drug," he
said.

James says a major issue also is the number of "aliens" crossing from
Canada into the U.S.

"People from some of the Third World countries who are interested in
doing harm or committing chaos here in the United States have an easy
access to Canada," he said.

"Because of our lack of resources here, these people have easy access
to the United States. We were successful in catching Ressam -- but we,
as well as the rest of the government, are asking, 'What haven't we
caught?' "

On the people-smuggling front, the U.S. is concerned about an influx of
Koreans who land at Vancouver International Airport as visitors, then
cross illegally into the U.S. to join relatives in large Korean
communities in Los Angeles and other cities.

"Right now, the most significant increase we have seen is in the
smuggling of South Koreans," he said.

"Last fiscal year, we apprehended 57 of them and this year we are
already up to 101 which is a 77-per-cent increase."

He said Mexicans are increasingly avoiding the 9,000 or so border
patrol agents in the south and flying to Vancouver to be smuggled into
the U.S.