CRIME FINDS HOME ON U.S.-CANADA BORDER

BLAINE, Wash. - With official attention in Washington riveted on the
U.S.-Mexican border, crime along the USA's undefended border with
Canada is climbing to levels surpassing the rum-running days of
Prohibition.

From the moose wallows of Maine to the raspberry fields of Washington
state, border authorities are wrestling with these problems:

For 18 months, shipments of the $7,000-a-pound British Columbia marijuana
known as "B.C. Bud" have been deluging the West Coast. The popular drug is
so potent that dealers trade it pound for pound for cocaine, U.S. Border
Patrol agents say. One means of transporting B.C. Bud: sea kayak. The arrest
in New York City of a suspected terrorist who had entered the U.S. from
Canada has spotlighted the Ottawa government's willingness to offer
political asylum to radicals fleeing the Middle East. The suspect, when
discovered, was building a bomb, allegedly to plant in the subway. Some
congressmen now worry that more would-be terrorists will try to infiltrate
from Canada. Aliens from Asia who are smuggled into the United States from
Canada are drowning in the St. Lawrence and Niagara rivers. Some Mohawk
Indians exploit their 11,000-resident reservation's strategic position on
New York's border with Ontario and Quebec. At least 12 times since 1994,
arrest reports in both countries have alleged Mohawks' involvement in
smuggling drugs and people to the United States as well as cigarettes and
liquor to Canada to evade that country's high taxes. Last month, a former
Mohawk chief was indicted by federal prosecutors for racketeering. Smuggled
merchandise ranging from Beanie Babies to embargoed Iranian carpets is
cross-ing the porous frontier, and inspectors say they're seizing 10% of it
at best. "Not to denigrate the war on drugs, but we have the war on rugs,"
says Tom Leupp, chief Border Patrol agent in Swanton, Vt.

For decades, the 4,000-mile border was the peaceful domain of
migrating moose and pleasure-seeking tourists. Canadians and Americans
still breeze through border crossings without filling out documents or
showing proof of citizenship. Most tourists are asked a few polite
questions by inspectors as they sit in their cars at checkpoints, then
go on their way.

But troubles are mounting. Although the northern boundary remains far
less violent than the U.S.-Mexican border, there has been an upswing
in alien smuggling and drug crimes. The Border Patrol apprehended
almost twice as many illegal aliens in 1997 than in 1988, and
marijuana confiscations jumped 87% from 1996 to 1997.

Now, overworked Border Patrol agents are pleading for reinforcements
to guard vast expanses of woods and farm fields along the border,
often marked only by an occasional boundary stone. A Senate committee
last month urged the Border Patrol to deploy more agents along the
Canadian border; for now, only 291 of the Border Patrol's 7,700 agents
are assigned to the Canadian line.

What finally turned Congress' attention northward was the specter of
international terrorism. Several recent arrests have brought home the
possibility that terrorists are establishing themselves in Canada,
because of that government's relatively easy-going attitude toward
asylum, then slipping into the USA:

Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, 24, a Palestinian from Israel, won refugee
status in Canada and kept it despite two criminal convictions there.
Arrested three times by the Border Patrol while trying to sneak into
Washington state here at Blaine, the major crossing point in the west,

he was freed by an immigration judge pending a deportation hearing.

Then, in July, 1997, New York police arrested him and another
Palestinian as they allegedly were within hours of pipe-bombing the
city's subways. Mezer is on trial in Brooklyn on federal conspiracy
charges.

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani charged the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service with negligence. Justice Department Inspector
General Michael Bromwich blamed the trouble on Mezer's "easy entry
into Canada" and a shortage of Border Patrol agents in the Northwest.

"We got him three times," says Gene Davis, deputy Border Patrol chief
here. "What bothers me about the Mezer case is, how many times did we
not get him - or others?"

Tracking terrorists

Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh, 29, fled to Canada from Saudi Arabia after
the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. airmen. While Canadian
authorities were considering asylum, they got a Saudi tip that Sayegh
had driven a signaling car in the attack. Canada deported him to the
United States after he agreed to provide information. He later reneged
on his plea bargain and is being held in a federal detention center.
Canada accepted Mohammed Hussein al-Husseini in 1991, but returned him
to his native Lebanon in 1994 after he admitted membership in the
Iran-financed Hezbollah organization and said a Hezbollah support
network was active in Canada. Hezbollah has been linked to terrorist
attacks against Israel and the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon. A
member of the Abu Nidal gang tried to enter the United States at
Champlain, N.Y. in January, 1996, with false documents. Yousef Khalid
Salem, 41, was deported to Lebanon.

The FBI declined to discuss the terrorist threat from Canada. The
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's equivalent of the
CIA, has been more forthright. In April, the intelligence agency
reported, "Most of the world's terrorist groups have established
themselves in Canada, seeking safe haven, setting up operational bases
and attempting to gain access to the USA."

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House immigration
subcommittee, cites Canada's "chilling" asylum record as a reason to
preserve a controversial 1996 immigration law that would make crossing
the border far more complicated.

Though the technology isn't ready, the measure requires the INS to
install by Oct. 1 a nationwide computerized system matching an entry
document from every visiting alien with an exit document as the alien
leaves the United States. Canadians who like the current system want
an exemption from the new paperwork, saying the law was aimed at
tracking visa overstayers and wouldn't block terrorism.

Knowing "who's coming in, why they're coming and how long they're
staying" would help track terrorists, Smith responds. As for
Canadians' sensibilities, it's "fairness and equity" to make them
complete the same forms Mexicans will. "The time has come to treat
both borders the same," he says.

If Smith prevails, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says, the result could
be titanic traffic backups for American citizens and noncitizens
alike, as resentful Canadians fill out the new entry and exit forms.

An imbalance in border policing

Powerful Texans and Californians in Congress have dictated border
policing efforts for years, pressuring federal agencies to deploy most
of its resources on the Southwest.

The 291 Border Patrol agents assigned to the Canadian boundary monitor
the terrain between border checkpoints, the 90 northern crossings
staffed by customs and immigration inspectors. The crossings include
both busy locations such as Detroit and Buffalo and quiet stations
such as Sweetgrass, Mont.

Many of the smaller ports of entry are unstaffed at night, so agents
must rely on remote sensors, tips from farmers and their friendships
with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to track night crossers.

In pending appropriations bills, Congress is recognizing the
imbalances. The Senate Appropriations Committee told the INS to "begin

deploying" more Border Patrol agents outside of the Southwest. But
every dollar allocated for new construction projects in the
committee's bill - lights, fences, roads and Border Patrol stations -
goes to the boundary with Mexico.

Northern-based federal crime fighters chafe at their backwater status.
Steve Casteel, who heads the Drug Enforcement Administration regional
office in the Pacific Northwest, says he feels like "the right fielder
on a Little League team."

Raw statistics don't yet justify a massive reallocation of resources.
The 16,344 illegal aliens caught in northern Border Patrol sectors in
fiscal 1997 would represent only 1% of the 1,368,707 arrests on the
Mexico border. The 1,487 pounds of hydroponically grown B.C. Bud
seized at Blaine last year were a big deal here, but the Border Patrol
in McAllen, Texas, seized 113,272 pounds of marijuana in that period.

Border Patrol agent Ray Gaudreau, of Swanton, Vt., says his area's
biggest shortfall isn't more agents. What is needed, Gaudreau says, is
money to put arrested aliens on planes for distant homelands. Now,
they may be sent back to Canada, free to try again.

In the Southwest, 90% of arrested illegal entrants are Mexicans. In
steady annual numbers, the north in the 1990s has recorded arrests of
110 nationalities, including Turks, Kazakhs, Russians, Chinese,
Punjabi Indians and Pakistanis.

Thousands of mainland Chinese have been smuggled to Canada with false
documents, paying up to $70,000 for the complete travel package.
Buying time in Canada by making phony asylum claims, many Chinese
ultimately filter down to New York City sweatshops and restaurants,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Fred Bowen says.

About half of would-be illegal entrants from Canada sign up with
smuggling rings. They often can be cruelly incompetent.

A Malaysian woman being ferried to Youngstown, N.Y., in a flimsy
inflatable raft drowned in the icy Niagara River in 1989.

In 1996, 51-year-old Naseem Taj of Pakistan died when St. Lawrence
River waves swamped her overcrowded boat crossing the
smuggling-plagued Akwesasne Mohawk reservation.

"Canada lets everybody in, and two days later they're coming down
here," Gaudreau says. A few years ago, Canada lifted visa requirements
for tourists from South Korea and Costa Rica. Within weeks, the Border
Patrol began seeing waves of illegal immigrants from those countries.

Proud of its tradition of haven, Canada approves 40% of political
asylum applications, compared to the 17% approved by the United
States. But the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board's Rachel
Labelle says Ottawa is getting a bad rap over terrorism.

Canada bars known terrorists. Last year, immigration judges rejected
775 applicants from Israel, mainly Palestinians, approving only 21.

Experts differ on the scope of the terrorist threat from Canada, which
has become home to radical Indian Sikhs, Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers and
Algerian fundamentalists.

The publicized recent cases "may be the tip of a significant iceberg,"
says former CSIS strategic planning chief David Harris, a former
Canadian intelligence official and now president of Insignis Strategic
Research in Ottawa.

Brian Jenkins, a Rand Corp. consultant, is less concerned about a
terrorist threat. In 10 years, he says, there have been only a handful
of attempted terrorist border crossings, none harmful. "It doesn't
rise to the level of peril," Jenkins says.

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"