Smuggling down on border shared by U.S., Canada

ALBURGH, Vt. – On the northeastern arm of Lake Champlain, it’s hard to tell where the United States-Canadian border is. There’s a small buoy boaters use, but nothing else. A lot of boaters miss it.

That’s where the Border Patrol’s Supervisory Agent George Woodward steps in with his boat.

“Recreational boaters are very good about it,” said Woodward. “If they are here inadvertently, they’re usually appalled and apologetic and everything else. I just tell them, ‘Look, it happens.”‘

But not everyone who crosses without reporting does it by accident. “This lake has a history of smuggling, it really does,” Woodward said.

Summer is the busy time for both the Border Patrol and smugglers of contraband who choose to enter the U.S. illegally by Lake Champlain and the surrounding areas. But the Border Patrol says organized smuggling activity in the area is way down this summer.

Border Patrol officials credit the reduction in smuggling to benefits of the long-building emphasis on better security. Last year, as part of that effort, U.S. and Canadian officials broke up what they described as two major rings that smuggled illegal immigrants across the border, many through Alburgh.

“We have received more people, more equipment, more stuff to get things done,” said Mark Henry, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector, which runs from Ogdensburg, N.Y., 295 miles east to the New Hampshire-Maine line.

Organized smuggling is down, but violence is up.

Last week, an agent fired his weapon after being shot at by a person who assaulted him when apprehended near the border in Derby Line. It was the third shooting in the Swanton sector in less than a year.

Henry says the violence is a symptom of their success.

“They’re getting frustrated,” Henry said of the smugglers. “They’re being denied entry. Part of that is we see more violence on the border. It’s not just here, but nationwide.”

During the first nine months of the current fiscal year, the Border Patrol says the number of violent incidents has increased by 67 percent. Through June 30, the number of assaults was 1,128, up from 676 in 2007, said Lloyd Easterling, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington.

Easterling said the greatest increase in violence is in the San Diego Sector on the Mexican border.

“As the Border Patrol increases its level of resources and continues to expand control of the borders, criminal organizations and criminals that operate along our nation’s borders with Mexico and Canada are aggressively and increasingly reluctant to abandon portions of the border where, in some cases, they have operated with impunity in the past,” Easterling said. “This entrenchment mentality, along with a willingness to engage our officers, has resulted in an escalation in violence and assaults.”

One of the three border shootings in the Swanton sector occurred last August on a back road in Alburgh, not far from Missisquoi Bay. The most recent, on July 7, was to the east in Derby Line. The third shooting was in May in Malone, N.Y. There were no injuries in any of the shootings.

Last fall, Vermont’s U.S. attorney announced that two human smuggling rings, one based in Montreal, the other in Toronto, had been broken up after they had moved hundreds of illegal immigrants from Asia and Latin America into the U.S. Some illegal immigrants were charged as much as $10,0000.

Agents don’t know whether any people were smuggled down the lake as part of those rings, but the lake has been used by other smugglers.

“We’ve had several attempts where people have rented boats in Canada and come down, you know, with a guide and a smuggler and a car will be waiting along a shoreline where we’ve interdicted them and apprehended them,” said Border Patrol Supervisory Agent John Letourneau.

The rings sent people walking across the border in Alburgh or down unguarded back roads or railroad tracks, where the new arrivals were picked up by waiting vehicles.

Since the 2001 attacks on the United States, the Border Patrol has been tripling its personnel levels on the U.S.-Canadian border. And it’s more than just people. The Border Patrol has more high-tech equipment, including aircraft, all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles and even personal watercraft.

Henry won’t say how many additional agents there are in the sector, but the Highgate outpost where Woodward is based is overcrowded and still more agents are on the way. A new office is being planned.

Woodward and other specially trained agents have used boats to patrol the lake for years. They always have had snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles, but now there are more of them.

It’s not hard for boaters to cross the border. Just like land travelers, they have to report and Homeland Security just opened a new lakeside station at the southern end of Missisquoi Bay to make it easier for them to do so.

But there will always be people trying to get into the country without permission. It’s the nature of smugglers that when one group is broken up, another will take its place.

“The smuggling routes change,” Letourneau said. “One year they’re in our area, the next year they’re west, the next year they’re in New York. Who knows what’s in the mind of the smuggler?”