U.S. BORDER BECOMES AS POROUS ON ITS NORTH FACE AS ON ITS
SOUTH

(Seattle) -- The man walking through the darkened berry fields hugging
the Canadian border east of Blaine, Wash., stopped and whistled,
acting so fishy Border Patrol agents, surreptitiously watching,
immediately tagged him as suspicious.

Moments later, a Korean woman, with her 6-year-old child in tow,
emerged into the open on the U.S. side of the berry patch.

The pair was quickly apprehended, along with the man who was waiting
for them.

This is what happens when everything goes right on the U.S.- Canadian
border. People who try to sneak across, like this mother and child
recently, are caught by U.S. Border Patrol agents and either detained
or returned to Canada.

The reality is that this often doesn't happen. More likely than not,
the smugglers succeed. And one reason, say those who patrol the
border, is that their force is being depleted to bolster the southern
border with Mexico.

As a result, a leaky border is getting leakier. Foreigners sneaking
in, criminals sneaking out, terrorists, drug couriers, even baby
sellers -- all have chapters in recent border lore.

Many, without visas, are desperate to enter the United States while
others recognize the border as an easy way to bring in valuable
baggage: lucrative, high-grade Canadian-grown marijuana known as B.C.
bud. They slip in across a vast border that slices through berry
fields, forests, mountains and ocean. At night, much of the border is
unprotected.

Border Patrol officials, who defend the border beyond the established
crossings, estimate that agents catch about one-third of the
smugglers who try to cross near Blaine, and they freely concede that
figure may be optimistic.

Most of the smuggling occurs between Blaine and Ross Lake, Eugene
Davis, deputy chief Border Patrol agent, told a congressional
committee earlier this year. "It is very easy to simply jump or drive
across the small ditch which separates the two countries," he said.

It's known as Boundary Road on the American side, Zero Avenue in
Canada. Narrow country roads, just a ditch apart, but a virtual
freeway for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. Yet only about 36
Border Patrol agents are assigned to this border, and no one works the
night shift.

"If I was (going across), I'd wait until midnight," said Ramon Nunez,
assistant chief patrol agent in Blaine. He said the patrol has
sophisticated sensors planted along the border, but they often go off
with no response. Nunez said he did a study last May and found the
patrol was unable to respond to 60 percent of the sensors that were
activated.

Sometimes the sensors signal the sacks of marijuana that are thrown,
often in hockey bags, across the border for pickup on the other side.
Just last week, U.S. Customs agents found 100 pounds of marijuana in a
bag that had been tossed into the United States from Zero Avenue.
Agents arrived before the courier did.

Agents said the drugs would have fetched $300,000 in Whatcom County,
and more than twice that had they made it to the likely destination,
California.

The area is so remote there's small likelihood of smugglers ever
getting caught, conceded Patrick Guimond, a veteran U.S. Customs
officer. Just last week, a California attorney went to court on
charges she conspired to sneak pregnant Hungarian women across the
border at Blaine. U.S. officials estimated as many as 40 Hungarian
women came across illegally in a two-year period during the mid-1990s,
and none was caught.

Customs officials who staff the official ports of entry say they've
seen a huge increase in the amount of marijuana seized at the border
stations between Blaine and Lynden. "B.C. bud is a continuing problem
at the border," said Roy Hoffman, the resident agent for U.S. Customs
in Blaine. "People are always coming up with another ingenious way to
smuggle."

Just a week ago, two Canadian kayakers were arrested on Lopez Island
when a San Juan County sheriff's deputy found 94 pounds of marijuana
in their kayak. The pair allegedly had paddled from Vancouver Island
with the contraband.

What angers many of those who patrol the border is that despite the
huge increase in smuggling from Canada, agents are being plucked from
the Canadian border for assignments on the southern border. After a
summer hiatus, this month three agents from Blaine, taken from a force
of 49, were sent to Arizona on one-month assignments. Immigration and
Naturalization Service officials say agents are desperately needed to
patrol the busy southern border.

In a 1998 report to the Department of Justice, the Border Patrol
reported that apprehensions in the Blaine area dropped from 4,473 in
1993 to 2,684 in 1997. The agency blamed the drop on the number of
agents detached from Blaine to the Mexican border.

"We need to do the jobs we were hired to do and protect the Pacific
Northwest border," said Keith Olson, a Border Patrol agent and
president of the local National Border Patrol Council. "We have no
graveyard shift. It's been like that for years. All the terrorists of
the world can march right through."

He said agents joke, "We only catch the stupid ones."

What also angers Olson is that the Border Patrol now has no boat,
though its jurisdiction covers 120 miles of ocean.

The smuggling of B.C. bud is considered so serious that the U.S.
National Drug Policy Council has designated the Interstate 5 corridor
as a "high-intensity" drug-trafficking area.

According to the council, drug-related emergency-room visits
in Washington state are running 50 percent higher than the
national average. The council names five main import routes
into the United States: Seattle-Tacoma International
Airport, the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, the Interstate 5
corridor, the Yakima Valley and the Canadian border.

"Poly-drug organizations with longstanding family ties to Michoacan,
Mexico, are currently utilizing the I-5 corridor to bring drugs to the
Northwest," the drug-policy council reports in its Web page. "The
purity of heroin has increased significantly, resulting in record
level heroin-related overdose deaths in the Seattle area. Domestic
indoor-grown British Columbian and Mexican marijuana is readily available."

Nunez, with the Border Patrol, said his agency confiscated 74 pounds
of marijuana in 1996. In the fiscal year that ended last month, that
number soared to 1,166 pounds. And that, officials have said, is just
a fraction -- perhaps 10 percent -- of what comes across. Reports have
pegged the value of the British Columbia marijuana crop at over $1
billion a year.