TROUBLE ON THE 'OTHER' BORDER

Northwest Agents Say Smuggling There Is On The Rise While
Resources Are Diverted South

SEATTLE - The man walking through the darkened berry fields hugging the
Canadian border east of Blaine, Wash., stopped and whistled, acting so
fishy that 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
last week, 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 border
with Mexico.

As a result, a leaky border is getting leakier. Undocumented
immigrants sneaking in, criminals sneaking out. They slip across a
vast border that slices through berry fields, forests, mountains and
ocean. At night, much of the border is unprotected.

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.

A 1997 report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, that
country's equivalent of the CIA, found "most of the world's terrorist
groups have established themselves in Canada, seeking safe have,
setting up operational bases and attempting to gain access to the USA."

And it goes both ways. In June, a man charged in a Baltimore slaying
slipped into Canada by walking across the tideflats from Blaine to
White Rock, Canada, to apply for refugee status. His petition for
asylum was denied.

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, Wash.,
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 undocumented immigrants, drug smugglers and other
criminals. About three dozen 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 in May and found the
patrol was unable to respond to 60 percent of the sensors that were
activated.

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, 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 U.S. 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."

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, Wash.

"B.C. bud is a continuing problem at the border," said Roy Huffman,
the resident agent for U.S.Customs in Blaine. "People are always
coming up with another ingenious way to smuggle."

Recently, two Canadian Kayakers were arrested on Lopez Island when a
sheriff's deputy found 94 pounds of marijuana in their kayak. The pair
allegedly had paddled from Vancouver Island with the contraband.

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

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 long standing 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 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
B.C. marijuana crop at more than $1 billion a year.

"We have an open border. You can walk the stuff across, bike it, run
it or canoe it across the water," said Mike Flego, resident agent in
charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration based in Blaine.

Frustrated U.S. border agents have appealed for help to Rep. Lamar
Smith, R-Texas, who chairs the immigration subcommittee of the House
Judiciary Committee and is sympathetic.

"B.C. bud is a $1 billion cash crop in B.C. and, according to (U.S.
drug czar Barry McCaffrey), 60 percent is exported to the U.S.," said
Allen Kay, Smith's spokesman. "Almost all of it enters the U.S.
through Washington state. And the Asian drug cartels are targeting
Washington state."

He said Congress authorized the hiring of 1,000 new agents, but the
INS is dragging its feet, hiring only about 300 this year.

"We can't neglect the Northwest border," Kay said. "(Smith's) theory
is if you build up the border at one place, the drug smugglers and
terrorists will find the weak spot and exploit it. That seems to be
exactly what's happening in Washington state."