A Canadian Immigration Officer posed as a Lawyer.

A man hiding in Toronto after he was ordered deported to Brazil claims a border services agent arrested him after posing as his lawyer using the Terrorism bill to identify, persecute, prosecute, convict and punish undocumented Immigrants as Terrorists but also Canada's widely known values of fairness and respect for human rights. Hmmmmm?
.

Fabricio Campos's lawyer, Guidy Mamann, said the failed refugee claimant was arrested Tuesday outside his friend's west-end apartment by an immigration enforcement officer who had called Campos's cellphone that morning identifying himself as one of his lawyers and offering to take him to meet his wife.

"This is not about (my client) but about people who get a call from a lawyer, who ends up being a law enforcement officer impersonating and interfering (in) one's rights to legal counsel," Mamann said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Campos, a drywaller, is being detained at an immigration holding centre. He's due for deportation to Brazil on Tuesday.

In a statement issued yesterday, the Canada Border Services Agency would not comment specifically on Campos's claims, but it did say "our information conflicts with the complainant's."

The release said all allegations of employee misconduct are taken seriously, and management reviews and investigates all complaints.

In an affidavit not yet filed in court, Campos claimed he had a call on his cellphone Tuesday morning from a man claiming to be a lawyer "Joel" from Mamann's law firm.

"Naturally when the caller identified himself as `Joel,' I believed he was referring to Mr. Sandaluk. The caller told me that he wanted to take me to see my wife in detention," Campos said in the affidavit. "He asked me if I was at 75 Emmett Ave. I told him, no, I'm at a friend's house at Trethewey and Black Creek. I told him the address."

Campos said he asked the caller twice if it was safe to see his wife since immigration authorities were out looking for him. "He assured me that I wouldn't be detained," he said. Ten minutes later he was arrested by two immigration enforcement officers in the lobby.

Mamann said Campos's phone displayed the caller's number – the same as that used by one of the officers. "Why would someone in hiding tell an arresting officer where he was?" the lawyer asked.

Campos has been in Canada since 2002. His wife, Marta Sousa, was arrested with their Canadian-born daughter a day earlier when officers arrived at their home looking for him. Sousa and the girl were released after Campos's arrest.

Mamann plans to complain to the Canadian Bar Association, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Civil Liberties Association about the officer's alleged conduct

The Border Patrol checkpoints are Constitutional?

The Border Patrol in Washington is burgeoning in the post-9/11 world. It's got more agents, better equipment, a new station -- and it's making a lot of arrests.

But it has also adopted a tactic that has raised both questions and ire: interior roadblocks dozens of miles from the nearest border.

Since the end of February, the U.S. Border Patrol has operated 53 roadblocks -- border agents call them "tactical traffic checkpoints" -- at the Anacortes ferry terminal, on state Route 20 near Newhalem and on U.S. Highway 101 on the Olympic Peninsula.

The statistics speak for themselves as to the effectiveness of the roadblocks:

81 undocumented immigrants taken into custody;

19 people turned over to other agencies for state crimes; and

24,524 vehicles carrying 41,912 passengers checked.

Out of 41,000+ ID checks, the haven't caught any "terrorists.

To the Border Patrol, the checkpoints are a testament to its efficacy in deterring terrorists, stopping drug smugglers and deporting undocumented immigrants. But others say the price of such enhanced security is a diminution of American liberty.

"How much are we willing to give up?" asks Lois Danks, coordinator of the Stop the Checkpoints Committee on the Olympic Peninsula. "Do we give up our freedom of movement and our privacy? If they stop thousands of people and catch 10 people who work in a Mexican restaurant, how much does that increase our security?"

Border Patrol Chief John Bates points out the checkpoints have been ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. And he says that his agents are simply carrying out their duties as defined by the law, which allows such checkpoints within 100 miles of the border. We run these checkpoints to have an impact on the organizations that bring in narcotics, undocumented immigrants or who potentially could bring terrorists or weapons of mass destruction into the U.S.," Bates said.

With organized narcotics and people-smuggling rings, "we are having an impact," said Bates, who said he has received intelligence reports confirming the checkpoints' deterrent value.

"These organizations do know about the checkpoints and that there is a heightened likelihood that they would be apprehended if they brought people or narcotics across the border."

The Border Patrol has been proactive in trying to explain the checkpoints to affected communities.

"We have a mission that we have to conduct," Bates said.

Bates and other agents heard from a largely disgruntled crowd of about 350 Olympic Peninsula residents at a recent meeting at Chimacum High School.

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Michael Bermudez said the patrol sought to explain that the checkpoints provide "prevention through deterrence."

It was apparently a tough sell. "I wouldn't say it was a hostile crowd, but it was unsupportive of checkpoints. There were people there that no matter what we shared with them, they were not going to feel any different. But I'm sure there were people on the fence who might have been swayed."

Shankar Narayan, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, was not swayed. "I would say the overwhelming energy in the room was a mood of great concern about the expansion of Border Patrol activities on the Peninsula," Narayan said. "The question in the air was, where does this encroachment on our rights end?"
Narayan said the ACLU is exploring the possibility of filing a lawsuit to stop them.

The Border Patrol is the largest uniformed agency charged with carrying out immigration laws. It is caught in the crossfire of people who oppose laws and policies that result in deportation of undocumented immigrants who are productive members of rural Washington communities.

Danks, for example, said she opposes deporting undocumented Mexicans who have been here for years, working hard and raising children who are American citizens.

The Washington Farm Bureau also has concerns about the roadblocks' impact on agricultural communities.

"We've got these workers and neighbors who are our friends," said Dan Fazio, director of employer services at the Farm Bureau. "At what point does it not feel like America anymore?"
Remember Benjamin Franklin Quote:

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Or the quote or George Orwell:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

But the question should be base on the facts; So Let's see if I have this right they stopped 25,000 plus vehicles and asked 41,000 plus people for their papers only to nab 100 people 19 of whom were citizens. The statistics speak for themselves as to the effectiveness of the roadblocks:"
That amounts to a .004 rate of efficiency. This sounds like a big waste of time and money to me. The big problem I see with this is demanding 41,000 U.S. citizens for their papers. Sounds like Nazi Germany to me, Papers please. What happened to freedom of movement; There is a serious dilemma and I could argue either side.

I thought they were set up to catch "terrorists" - that's the original idea behind the roadblocks. It's Funny how the mission changes once they're set up for it.
I'm always amazed at how easy we give up our Constitutional rights to feel safe or because we have or are in fear.

There was recently a post by the excellent Radley Balko on this very topic over at Reason's Hit & Run blog. The 190 Million exception to the fourth amendment includes a map showing the affected area. From the post:The ACLU says that since September 11, 2001, the government has been steadily stretching the limits of Martinez, to the point where the Department of Homeland Security is using that case and the terrorism threat to conduct more thorough, more invasive searches at dozens of checkpoints across the country. With 33 checkpoints now in operation, we're not exactly to the point of "Ihre Papiere, bitte" Berlin yet, but the ACLU does warn that the area of the country 100 miles from every border and coastline would include about 190 million people, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population

The Border Fence between Canada and U.S. A Painted line

By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post

DERBY LINE, Vt. -- The changes started coming slowly to this small town where the U.S. border with Canada runs across sleepy streets, through houses and families, and smack down the middle of the shared local library.

First was the white, painted lettering on the pavement on three little side streets -- "Canada" on one side, "U.S.A." on the other. Then came the white pylons denoting which side of the border was which. After that, signboards were erected on some streets, ordering drivers to turn back and use an officially designated entry point.
And along with the signposts came an influx of American Border Patrol agents, cruising through the town in their green-and-white sport-utility vehicles with sirens, chasing down cars and mopeds that ignored the posted warnings.

For longtime residents accustomed to a simpler life that flowed freely across a largely invisible border, the final shock -- and what made most people really take notice -- was a proposal by the border agents last year to erect fences on the small streets to officially barricade the United States from Canada, and neighbor from neighbor.

"They're stirring up a little hate and discontent with that deal," said Claire Currier, who grew up in this border area and works at Brown's Drug Store, which has operated on the same spot since 1884. "It's like putting up a barrier. We've all intermingled for years."

For the Department of Homeland Security, the changes are part of a gradual fortification of America's northern border that began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has accelerated in recent years.

The hardening of the northern frontier is unsettling to many in the small towns along the border. For as long as most of these people can remember, the line between the United States and Canada has been little more than a historic curiosity, rather than the hard and fast demarcation that is America's southern border.

Named the Secure Border Initiative, the project calls for more than tripling the number of agents along the northern border, adding boats and helicopters, and deploying sophisticated new technology including hundreds of millions of dollars in new communications equipment, radiation detectors and three different types of camera-mounted sensors in the uninhabited wooded areas.

"It was freer before, but we live in a different world now," said agent Mark Henry, the operations officer at the Border Patrol's Swanton Sector, headquartered in Swanton, Vt. The sector encompasses about 24,000 square miles, extending from the town of Champlain, in Upstate New York, on the east all the way across to the border with Maine. The sector now has 250 agents, up from 180 three years ago, and the number is scheduled to reach 300 next year.

In 2001, there were 340 agents along the entire border with Canada.

"We're more visible," Henry said. "We've gotten more aircraft, more vehicles, more boats, more ATVs -- pretty much everything, we've got more. And we've got more people to man them."

"9/11 changed everything," said Border Patrol agent Fernando Beltran, the operations chief for Swanton Sector's Newport station, which includes Derby Line. "This may have been Mayberry before, but it's not anymore."

Residents of this town of 776 understand the need for enhanced security. They also wistfully remember a time when neighbors easily crossed into another country to visit neighbors. People went to church and to school on either side of the line. Members of the same family lived on either side. Some streets, an old factory, the local library and opera house, and a few houses straddle the line.
I have one brother -- he's American. He was born on the U.S. side. I was born on the Canadian side," said Arthur Brewer, who is 76. "It was like there was no border -- people back and forth.

"Actually, we're like one people," he added, "like two brothers, one family."

Brewer lives in Canada but walks a few miles almost every day to Brown's Drug Store, saying: "I'm always over here, chatting with the girls. This is the best pharmacy in the world." Brewer said he doesn't have a passport but knows he will have to get one soon, because rule changes next year will require it to cross the border.
"We living in a different world now," Brewer added. "It's too bad."

Lifelong resident Karen Jenne, the Derby Line town clerk and treasurer, said: "I went to church on the other side. I taught Sunday school there. I live on one of those unguarded streets -- I used to cross the border all the time."

Jenne sits on a committee formed when the border agents proposed erecting fences on the three mostly residential streets where the United States and Canada touch. The committee has a dozen members -- five from here in Derby Line, five from Stanstead, the Canadian town on the other side, as well as Beltran, the Border Patrol agent in charge, and his Canadian counterpart
Townsfolk are concerned about practical issues with fences. The two sides share a water system, a sewer system and snow-removal services. For years, the fire departments of both sides have helped each other without regard to a border, and fences, they fear, might disrupt travel routes for emergency vehicles.

"It hasn't been an easy issue for either side to digest," Jenne said. "But we understand that Border Patrol and Homeland Security have a job to do. . . . The general public doesn't understand what's crossing that border, whether it's drugs or illegals."

The Border Patrol agents are sympathetic to the residents' concerns. "It's trying for the community," Beltran said.

"They understand that there's a change, but to them it's a way of life," Beltran said as he cruised through the town streets in an unmarked SUV. "They never considered themselves in danger. There's a sense of security here."

But for the border agents, Sept. 11 exposed the vulnerability of America's northern frontier and the ease with which anyone -- a terrorist with a portable nuclear device, for example -- could cross into the United States from Canada using one of the multitude of unguarded back roads or forest paths, or, in a border town such as Derby Line, simply by crossing the street.

Beltran said he instructs his agents to use discretion and "common sense." It goes like this: "If a kid [on the Canada side] throws a Frisbee over here, he can come and get it. But if he got the Frisbee and kept walking down to the Arby's to get a soda, we're going to stop you."

"We can't be wrong once," Beltran added. "If we're wrong once, that could be devastating to the whole country."

The new vigilance has led to more arrests of people crossing illegally and interdiction of contraband, mostly drugs. Border agents in this sector said that last year they arrested people from 117 different countries trying to enter the United States illegally. Among the drugs, agents say, they have confiscated large shipments of ecstasy pills being smuggled in, as well as shipments of extra-potent hydroponic marijuana.

The resources here are still a small fraction of what is deployed on the southern border with Mexico. But with the increased Border Patrol presence, the North is starting to look more like what border residents of Texas, California and Arizona have been seeing for years.

As the that presence has increased, so has the risk of violence. Agents in the Swanton sector recall three relatively recent incidents when agents fired their weapons -- most recently when an agent was being beaten by a man he stopped. The agent fell over a guardrail, lost his glasses and fired to chase the suspect away.

"There's a lot of violence on the southern border, so some of that's going to transfer up here," said Norman Lague, the patrol agent in charge of the Champlain station The northern border, some agents say, presents more complex problems. Besides the few border towns such as Derby Line and nearby Beebe Plain, much of the border consists of forests, woods, cornfields, lakes and rivers.

"You can see the challenges we're faced with patrolling," Lague said, as he steered his SUV through the trees down one of the now-barricaded forest roads. "To protect this area, it's enormous. It's huge. It's wide open. You've got to know what you're doing to be an agent up here."

Lague is a 13-year veteran agent, who spent most of his time patrolling the area around Derby Line, where he grew up, before spending five years on the border with Mexico. One difference, he said, is that "there's a delineated line with Mexico. . . . Here, if you were to walk around this town, you would probably walk into Canada and not even know it."

A large part of the job, Lague and the others said, is community outreach and educating border residents that the way of life they have known for generations has profoundly changed.

"We interact with the public," Lague said, "so they understand we're not doing this stuff because of them; we're doing it to protect them.

"The patrol work may vary from our southern border," Lague added, "but our strategy is the same throughout the nation."

U.S./Canada Border station

Nobody crossed the border with proper screening...Another comedy perspective of the Border Patrol agents at the Borders. You be the judge.

Interview with U.S. Border Patrol at Canadian Border

wait a minute. I can't go back? Then I am taking you to my house. Nice comedy show and a different perpesctive of the Border Patrol agents at the U.S. and Canadian Border. Funny.

Exposing the blind side of Lou Dobbs in the War on Drugs and Broken Borders.

I used to like CNN, in days gone by they actually reported news, now alas they have dropped all pretense of news and have become the mouthpiece of whoever pays most, and that seems to be whoever is in the White House!

The worst offender of this sleazy bunch has to be Lou Dobbs. Day after day we are introduced to new and inventive ways that the Undocumented are taking over the US, and undermining the very fabric of our society!

I used to think that Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck was an insufferable bore, but Lou has elevated this genre to a new level! If there was an Oscar for bigoted idiot reporting, I would cast my vote for Lou Dobbs


American authorities allege three of the accused travelled to New York from Canada to try to buy weapons, including missiles, launchers and AK-47s. The men are also charged with fundraising and money laundering through "front" charitable organizations and U.S. bank accounts.
Money to bribe a U.S. official - traced during an international anti-terrorism probe aimed at the Tamil Tigers - came from Montreal, the FBI said Thursday.

And two of the men arrested in the bribery case are former Montreal residents, adding more Canadian connections to a widening probe that has seen six other men from Canada arrested on charges of aiding a foreign terrorist organization, including money laundering, smuggling equipment and people, and trying to purchase anti-aircraft missiles, machine-guns and other military equipment.

Tens of thousands of dollars from Montreal were earmarked as a bribe for a U.S. federal agent who was posing as a corrupt immigration officer, pretending to allow Tamils to illegally enter the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation alleged in a sworn criminal complaint filed in a New York court.

The money's path was tracked as part of a large sting operation mounted by the FBI against alleged operatives of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly called the Tamil Tigers, an organization banned as a terrorist group on both sides of the border.

So far a total of 14 people have been taken into custody in the joint FBI-RCMP probe.

First, three Canadians of Tamil descent were accused in New York City on the weekend of trying to buy military hardware after driving across the Canada-U.S. border to meet with a man they believed was a black-market arms dealer, but who was a federal agent, and a Tamil man, who co-operated with U.S. authorities in their probe.

Three other Canadian residents were arrested this week by the RCMP in Ontario, including an engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo who is accused of arranging student couriers to smuggle equipment into Sri Lanka to further the Tamil Tiger's cause.

A third set of criminal complaints unsealed in a New York court, against three people arrested in Buffalo as part of the FBI's probe, now reveal further Canadian links.

Thileepan Patpanathan and his brother, Sujeepan Patpanathan, moved to Buffalo from Montreal about six months ago, said Rodney O. Personius, a Buffalo lawyer who represented one of the men in court.

They lived in Montreal for about three years, he said.

The Patpanathan brothers are charged along with Logeswaran Krishnamoorthy of knowingly conspiring to bribe a public official to illegally bring other people from Sri Lanka. They were caught in a sting operation using the same Tamil informant.

An agent was introduced to co-conspirators as an officer with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service who, for a fee, could help smuggle foreigners into the U.S. The man was, in fact, a federal agent and the meetings were recorded, the FBI said.

An offer of $6,000 US per person smuggled was offered, authorities alleged.

Exposing the blind side of Lou Dobbs in the War in Drugs, and Terror

Federal agents have closed down the first known smuggling tunnel under the U.S.-Canada border and arrested on drug charges the three Canadians who allegedly built it, law enforcement authorities said Thursday.
The DEA said the newly completed tunnel is the first discovered on the northern border. Several tunnels have been discovered along the Mexico border.
The 360-foot tunnel runs from under a Quonset hut on the Canadian side of the border to the living room of a house in Lynden, Washington, authorities said. The town is about 90 miles north of Seattle.
After they were tipped about the tunnel while it was under construction early this year, U.S. and Canadian agents jointly monitored the project until it was completed in early July.
Authorities said the tunnel -- reinforced by wooden beams and steel bars -- is between 3 feet (1 meter) and 10 feet deep and about 360 feet long.
Officials said one of the defendants owned the British Columbia land where the tunnel began, and all of the defendants had cared for the property on the U.S. side to make it appear occupied.
"The presence of a tunnel on our northern border threatens the security of countries, whether it is used to smuggle drugs, contraband or even terrorists," said U.S. Attorney John McKay.
The owner of the house on the U.S. side of the border has not been arrested, one official said.
The officials said they expected the three to be prosecuted in the United States rather than Canada because no illegal drugs were transported from the U.S. side of the border.

Frozen River at the Northern Border

Frozen River at the Northern Border.



film about borders, both physical and psychological, "Frozen River" (Sony Classics) is the somber, understated but dramatically effective feature debut from writer-director Courtney Hunt.

It opens with the arresting image of a woman silently but passionately weeping, then gradually unfolds the reasons for her despair. Upstate New York working-class mom Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), we learn, has just been abandoned by her gambling-addicted husband, who's taken with him the down payment on the family's desperately needed new trailer home.

So, leaving her 5-year-old son, Ricky (James Reilly), in the care of his 15-year-old brother, T.J. (Charlie McDermott), Ray sets off to retrieve the funds. Her hunt leads instead to a violent confrontation with Lila (Misty Upham), a local Mohawk woman now in possession of the deadbeat's abandoned car.

A former cigarette smuggler, widowed Lila has more recently turned to transporting undocumented aliens across the ice-covered St. Lawrence River from Canada into the United States. Wielding a gun, she compels the normally timid Ray to make such a run, assuring her that, since she's white, the patrolling troopers will let her pass unchallenged.

Though shaken by the ordeal, Ray is drawn to the financial rewards of this human trafficking and volunteers to make another trip. As she and the reticent Lila slowly bond, their repeated border crossings become riskier and they become increasingly desensitized to the plight of the people they're ferrying.

Yet by the film's conclusion, a series of harrowing events breaks the cycle of victimization, pulling both women back from the moral margin across which they've strayed.

An unflinching study of hard times, racial divisions, the plight of migrants and the lure of fast money, "Frozen River" is also, ultimately, a celebration of barrier-transcending friendship, rediscovered decency and the quiet, self-sacrificing heroism that makes for a morally satisfying, if less than happy ending.

Leo and Upham give powerfully restrained performances, with Leo in particular presenting a fully rounded character whose flaws and limitations are as clearly delineated as her virtues. Every detail of the Rust Belt setting adds to the air of authenticity.

The film contains a human trafficking theme, some rough and crude language, and a brief strip-club scene without nudity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Lou Dobbs are Clueless When It Comes to a Broken border and protection. Hypocrisy is not Family Values Lou.!!!!!!.




1.-Terrorists from the Sept 11, 2001 enter the Country thru Canada not Mexico.

2.-Canadians Citizens and foreigners can enter the Country Thru Canada with just Driver License (EDL).

3.-Until June 1, 2009,. Canadians and foreigners entering the U.S. thru Canada at land and sea border crossings will be required to show their passports.

4.- Since January 31, 2008. U.S Citizens and Mexicans entering the Country Must present a passport But Canadians Driver License. Why?


Minister Day met with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff

The Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety Canada, met with Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security.

"We are making real progress together, and my meetings with Secretary Chertoff only serve to enhance the strong working relationship between our two governments," said Minister Day. "Once again, we have had a frank and fruitful discussion of key safety and border security initiatives."

Minister Day and Secretary Chertoff discussed a number of issues pertaining to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) a trilateral partnership which facilitates the cooperation of the three nations on safety and security initiatives as well as economic prosperity and competitiveness.

Also discussed was the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). Under the U.S. WHTI Final Rule, as of June 1, 2009, Canadians entering the U.S. at land and sea border crossings will be required to show their passports. This rule is already in effect for those travelling to the U.S. by air. Canada continues to work vigorously with the U.S. government to ensure that legitimate trade and travel across our borders are not disrupted as a result of the new document requirements

.

Building on the success of the B.C. Enhanced Driver's License (EDL) pilot project launched this past January, both Governments reiterated their support for expanding similar initiatives to other provinces and territories. These documents meet the security standards and are recognized as an acceptable alternative to passports at the Canada-U.S. border under the U.S. WHTI.

Canada and the United States continue to work together to enhance the safety and security of North America, and collaborate on a strategy to facilitate trade and travel while maintaining our secure borders, including emergency management protocols

CNN's Lou Dobbs Is Clueless When It Comes to a Broken border and protection. My Opinion: It's sad history but doesn't mean that we are less corrupted than the Mexican counterpart. Blaming Mexico and Mexicans doesn't make you an exception of pathetic and Anti Mexican.




MIAMI — Bribery. Drug trafficking. Immigrant smuggling. McClatchy Newspapers.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to stop these types of crimes.
But instead, so many of its officers have been charged with committing those crimes themselves that their boss in Washington recently issued an alert about the "disturbing events" and the "increase in the number of employee arrests."

Thomas Winkowski, assistant commissioner of field operations, wrote a memo to
more than 20,000 officers nationwide noting that employees must behave professionally at all times — even when they are not on the job.
"It is our responsibility to uphold the laws, not break the law," Winkowski wrote in the Nov. 16 memo, which was obtained by The Miami Herald. Winkowski could not be reached for comment.

Winkowski's memo cites several employee arrests involving domestic violence, driving under the influence and drug possession. But court records show that Customs and Border Protection officers and other Department of Homeland Security employees from South Florida to the Mexican border states have been charged with dozens of far more serious offenses.

Among them: A Customs and Border Protection officer at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was charged in February with conspiring to assist a New York drug ring under investigation by tapping into sensitive federal databases.
Winkowski's warning signals an overwhelming preoccupation with public perception in the era after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Two highly controversial issues, illegal immigration and national security, have thrust Homeland Security into the public eye as it tries to prevent another terrorist attack.
The bureaucratic behemoth grew out of a controversial consolidation five years ago of several federal agencies, including the U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Employees of both agencies joined either of two new agencies: Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known for their acronyms CBP and ICE.
CBP handles the border, airports and seaports; ICE investigates immigration- and customs-law violators.
"We as an agency are constantly policing ourselves so that the public trust is not diminished as a result of inappropriate activity, whether it's on the job, off the job, criminal or not criminal," said Zachary Mann, a special agent and CBP spokesman in Miami.
Some ICE employees also have been caught up in episodes of alleged misconduct — although a senior Miami-area official said he was not aware of any increase in criminal or administrative actions.

"I haven't noticed an uptick in misbehavior, even though we have had a substantial increase in personnel since the merger," said Anthony Mangione, the ICE Miami special agent in charge.

Administrative incidents are normally kept quiet by federal authorities. But officials can't control publicity when misconduct escalates to serious criminal behavior, such as the February case involving the CBP officer at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Elizabeth Moran-Toala, a six-year veteran, was accused of accessing an electronic database known as the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, which serves as a tool to stop illegal drug imports.
According to an indictment, she is accused of tapping into the system several times to pass along information to a Delta Airlines baggage handler who was conspiring with a drug ring to transport cocaine and heroin on flights from the Dominican Republic to New York. Moran-Toala, 36, was transferred to New York in late February for prosecution.

Other recent South Florida cases — mirroring a pattern on the border states — have involved officers and agents accused of accepting illegal payoffs for migrant smuggling, drug trafficking, witness tampering, embezzlement and rape.
CBP and ICE managers say these cases simply reflect individual criminal behavior, not the culture of the married agencies.
But some longtime employees said administrative incidents, such as hostile confrontations or heavy drinking, may reflect the low morale and intense rivalries after the merger of federal agencies under Homeland Security.
Some employees from the old INS are the most vocal in their complaints. They bitterly denounce employees who came from the old Customs Service for "seizing control" of both CBP and ICE, "lording it over" former INS employees and showing disdain toward immigration-related work.

Expected to improve efficiency, the merger has instead spawned tension. Both CBP and ICE scored near the bottom in a 2007 survey of employee satisfaction at 222 federal government agencies.
Mangione, the ICE agent, dismissed the notion that employee misbehavior is a result of post-merger friction.
"An employee smuggling aliens has nothing to do with the merger," Mangione said. "It's somebody being a criminal."
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/228232

The blind side of Lou Dobbs on War on drugs. B.C. Cannabis on the Northern Border.




Stopping smugglers is left to a multitude of government agencies and agents on both sides of the border. The political intrigue and sovereignty issues symbolized by anti-smuggling efforts became clear to me when I tried to interview top government bureaucrats in Ottawa and Washington, DC. Obfuscation, unreturned phone calls and non-responsive answers were the rule rather than the exception.

Because they are losing the war, officials are unwilling to provide stats or policy statements regarding smuggling. They're embarrassed. Federal officials in both nation's capitols sheepishly told me to contact local offices of the US Border Patrol and Customs Service, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Vancouver.

When I spoke to representatives of local agencies, I found them to be candid, affable and good-humoured about the obvious challenge of interdicting the total Canadian marijuana outflow. They seem like nice people.

"We're doing as much as we can," said Gene Davis of the US Border Patrol, "but marijuana is just one of many things we're trying to catch. We have a serious alien smuggling problem because Canada has a relatively open policy toward Third World immigrants, and that's a stepping stone for them entering the United States. The Southern border has gotten all the attention for so many years, but when Congress found out that even terrorists were coming across the northern border, and how few agents we had up here, they were really shocked."

Davis says that seizures of Canadian marijuana are up six hundred percent over last year's figures.

"Seizures are up because demand has increased, and so has supply. Why? Because the Canadian marijuana is so potent, between 25 to 30 percent THC, and everybody wants it. The BC bud is second to none in the drug world. The Blaine office has to patrol a very busy corridor which covers from the top of the Cascades west and includes the Olympic peninsula. There's lots of rugged hills and mountains. There are roads parallelling each other on both sides. We've asked for more manpower, and it looks like we might get it, but we've got so much territory, they could give us another 100 officers and it wouldn't be enough," he said.

US Border Patrol Intelligence Specialist Dave Keller says 42 agents are responsible for interdicting the 40 mile smuggling corridor near Vancouver.

"If we're getting more than two percent of what's coming across, we're lucky," he says. "The bulk of it is in commercial vehicles, but an average load is 35 pounds, enough to fit in one duffel bag. We haven't had the resources to examine the sea routes, and we don't think the air routes are significant. Many of the people we catch are ethnic minorities, like Central and South Americans who are also involved in gun and hard narcotics smuggling.

"We're seeing a rapid infiltration of organized crime, apparently a more rapid infiltration than what happened on the Mexican border. They're bringing marijuana south and sending guns, meth, cocaine and heroin. Definite Hells Angels involvement, Asian Triads, the works. Sometimes we see personal use smugglers: people who pick up one to three pounds of BC bud and bring it across for their own smoke."

Immigration topic framed by the Media as the only Undocumented Immigrants coming to U.S. are from Mexico.





Nobody seems to be much concerned about security reasons along the Canadian border where seems wide open.

Getting to the Whitlash Port of Entry involves a 40-mile drive down a dirt road that never seems to end. One hill climbs into another, and there’s the elephant in the car you can’t ignore.

That elephant, of sorts, is the public relations officer for the Havre sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, the guy doing the driving. He’s a former Marine and was kind enough to haul us around, though he won’t reveal the details surrounding the operations going on up here.

Security reasons, he says.

We’re the media and he’s the government. There’s a natural distrust between the two of us and it keeps us talking all the way to Whitlash. By the time we get there, I think he’s on our side, at least in the way of the public’s right to know what its government is doing.

Less than three minutes after we pull up to the Whitlash station, a man with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection comes out, fidgeting nervously. He’s overwhelmed with the paperwork passed down to him by headquarters over in Sweetgrass, and his computer keeps crashing.

Besides, he said, he didn’t know we were coming and that could be a problem. He needs to make some phone calls. He needs to get clearance. What did we want, anyway? His time? He doesn’t have it to give.

Our guide grins and says he’ll figure this out. He follows the Customs officer back into the station and returns moments later.

“This is the deal,” begins our guide. He says we can’t take pictures of the officers or the buildings until the boss in Sweetgrass grants permission.
“I’ve already taken pictures of the building,” photographer George Lane grumbles.

This is where the awkward silence sets in. Our guide asks that we not run the pictures we’ve already taken until we get clearance. I imagine confiscated film, but this is the wrong country for that. The photographer replies that we don’t need clearance, anyway, because he took the photos from a public road.

“And it’s a public building,” he shrugs.

The silence grows thicker. We’ve reached an impasse on the Montana prairie, waiting for a phone call from Sweetgrass that may or may not come.

There’s nothing in any direction. Whitlash is like an outpost on Tatooine, and I can feel the camera watching — the little white box mounted atop a wooden telephone pole.

The day before, we had toured the Sweetgrass Port of Entry 40 miles west. There, I had seen the control room with the television screens — the real-time video that helps the officers there keep on eye on things here.

The Canadian flag flaps in the wind beyond the camera and the sign that says “You are now leaving the United States.” The signs beyond that are in French and the words seem unnecessarily long.

“Hey, George,” I say. “What do you say we walk over there and say hello to the Canadians?”
“Can’t hurt,” George says.

Down in New Mexico with the Montana National Guard in April, I found, there was no way to jump the fence and chat with the Mexicans. But here on the 49th parallel, you can walk down a dirt road and shake a Canadian’s hand, so long as the U.S. Customs officers are willing to let you back into the country once you leave.

“Got your ID?” George asks.

“Yeah. Got yours? Good. Let’s go see.”

This is no-man’s land. The distance between the U.S. port and the Canadian post is about 100 yards. There’s a bush or two between them and a small white car parked on the Canadian side. The door to the Canadian post is unlocked. The place looks empty inside.

The lone Canadian customs officer sits at a desk around the corner, smoking a cigarette. He looks like Santiago from the Old Man and the Sea with his long gray beard and white hair. The patch on the man’s arm says “l’Agence des services frontaliers du Canada.”

“Ello,” he says, but he doesn’t get up. “Star Wars” plays on the television. A cat sleeps in a box on the counter and the crumbs of catnip are scattered nearby.

Compared to the frenzy across the border at the American post, this place is downright relaxed. The officer is friendly, cracking jokes, real mellow. He lives in a cabin behind the port, out here in the middle of nowhere.

“You’ve got to be something of a recluse to do it, eh,” he says, grinning.

It’s easy to make generalizations at moments like this — how the Canadians are relaxed and the Americans are stressed. The Canadians are friendly with the world. The Americans are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, arming Israel, disarming North Korea, siding with the Sunnis to suppress al Qaeda, and pondering a move into Pakistan.

Sure, the Canadian border isn’t exactly open, but it’s not Fort Knox, either. The Canadian agents didn’t even carry guns until recently. Really, it’s hard to hate a country that gave us the McKenzie Brothers and sayings like, “Take off, you hoser.”

Anyway, we’ve had our fun with the Canadian and he with us. It’s time to see if the boss over in Sweetgrass has given the U.S. Customs officer permission to speak with us.

“Got your ID?” asks George.

“Yep. Let’s go see if they’ll let us back in.”

I think race is definitely a factor in the immigration issue.




Because from the way the topic is framed in the media, Nativists, political stand point it seems that the issue is only about illegal immigrants from Latin America, and even more specifically, Mexico.

Nobody seems to be much concerned about security along the Canadian border where most of the drugs confiscated by federal agents in Montana come from people crossing the border at legal ports of entries, which begs the question: Do most smugglers try to sneak their wares into the U.S. from Canada through these legal crossings, or are the agents just not finding those who are crossing illegally?

The answer seems to be a little of both, according to Mike Milne, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

He notes that the vast majority of people coming into the United States do so at legal border crossings, which could be part of the reason for the larger number of drugs confiscated there.

“For instance, on a typical day nationally, 1.1 million people are processed through our points of entry,” Milne said, adding that the figure includes both northern and southern borders. “Those who are coming here between the legal crossings are A) entering the U.S. illegally, so they already have a violation there or B) are entering illegally because they’re up to no good in other ways. They’re smuggling narcotics, currency or other items.

“Are we perfect and catching everything? The answer is no. … Are the borders impenetrable? No. But we’re making them more secure and have more resources available now.”

Those realities are reflected in statistics compiled for the Havre sector, which covers 454 miles of the Montana-Canadian border, according to Ramon Rivera with the border patrol’s office in Washington, D.C

At legal ports of entry in the Havre sector during fiscal year 2007, which runs from Oct. 1, 2006, through the end of this month, agents confiscated marijuana 20 times, methamphetamine four times, cocaine six times, and psilocybin mushrooms, poppies and Oxycontin once each.

By comparison, during that same time frame at non-legal points of entry like trails or rural roads between the two countries the agents were involved in only four incidents involving marijuana, and one each of mushrooms and heroin. Only one of those incidents amounted to a quantity large enough n almost 19 pounds n to be considered something other than personal use.

Alex Harrington, spokesperson for the Havre sector, said it’s not just that more people go through the legal entry points; it’s also that the main mission of the border patrol is to search for terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, not drug smugglers.

“Our main mission is to look for illegal aliens and terrorists, and if the people we stop do have something on them, that’s good for our agents but it’s not the main reason we stop people,” Harrington said.

Confiscating small quantities of street drugs seems to be typical for what’s also happening at the legal border crossings in Montana, where agents typically make one or two large drug busts each year.

“They’re coming through with marijuana, coke or ecstasy in their pockets because they’re users,” Milne said. “But we’re certainly looking for and celebrate when we find our commercial loads.”

He expects more smugglers will try to cross the border via Montana in the future, since agents have been working the Washington-Vancouver border hard during the past decade. He warns that these drug dealers typically are well financed, dedicated and resourceful, which makes them “a formidable foe for law enforcement.”

“The pressure we put on them in western Washington has pushed larger amounts, specifically marijuana, into eastern Washington and parts of Montana,” Milne said. “It’s like that carnival game, where you whack a mole and it comes up somewhere else. We put pressure in one area, and they pop up somewhere else, quite possibly between ports of entries. It’s a moving target and we have to adapt and apply our resources based on risk management.

“The border patrol will tell you they don’t have enough officers to stand arm to arm, so we have to use our intelligence, training and experience.”

Since 2003, the office of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has almost tripled the size of the force on the 4,000-mile Canadian border, from 300 to 928. Overall, that that means each person is responsible for 4.3 miles.

In the Havre sector, which stretches from the eastern Montana border to the Continental Divide, its 92 agents equates to an average of about five miles per agent.

Havre generally ranks in the middle of the agent/per mile ratio of the eight sectors along the northern border. To its immediate west, the Spokane sector has 122 agents who patrol 307 miles of border, creating an agent-to-mile ratio of about 2.5 people per mile. The sector to the east, which basically covers the North Dakota border, has only 105 agents to patrol the 861 mile border, which equates to about eight miles per agent - the largest agent-to-mile ratio on the border.

The 863-mile Detroit sector has 122 agents, or 7 per mile; the Houlton, Maine, sector has 105 agents patrolling 611 miles of border, or about 6 people per mile. On the lower end of the scale, the Blaine sector, which covers western Washington, has 123 agents patroling 252 miles of border, or 2 people per mile. Buffalo, N.Y., which includes Niagra Falls, has 113 people for 341 miles, or 3 miles per agent. and the Swanton, VT., sector, which covers 295 miles of border, has 146 agents, or two per mile.

And with all this emphasis on catching terrorists or weapons of mass destruction, is it a success or failure of the Havre sector that it’s made only one arrest of an individual wanted for questioning in connection with possible terrorist activities?

“They’re not pounding on our door, but we are here just in case,” Harrington said. “It only takes one terrorist, one individual with a grudge against the United States, to come across with something on them.

“We want to make sure another 9/11 doesn’t happen.”

Immigration around the Globe: Canada. Immigration: A broken and dysfunctional system.


Canada's border agency doesn't know the whereabouts of 41,000 people ordered to leave the country, makes flawed decisions about when to lock up suspected illegals and keeps poor tabs on spending when it does usher them out of Canada, says the federal auditor general.

In a report Tuesday, Sheila Fraser criticized the Canada Border Services Agency for failing to monitor its detention and removal decisions across the country to ensure they are being made properly.

Fraser says as a result, growing numbers might be in Canada illegally, jeopardizing the integrity of Canada's immigration program.

"If people can come into the country and stay here illegally, why would they go through what was a very long and complicated process to become a resident in Canada?" she said.

Some of the problems were traced to difficulties with a major new computer system that lagged years behind schedule.

"The agency needs to track the status of cases at a national level according to its priority areas - which are to remove dangerous individuals and criminals first," the auditor's report says.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the government was acting on Fraser's advice.

"CBSA has already put in place quite a few of the recommendations that she's talked about, so we're improving. It's not perfect yet but it's a big improvement over what it has been."

In her review of other federal activities and programs, Fraser also found:

-Children on native reserves across Canada are eight times more likely to wind up in unevenly funded, poorly tracked foster care that appears to be failing them.

-Renovating drafty and crumbling 24 Sussex Drive, the prime minister's residence, would involve about $10 million of intensive repairs that could take as long as 15 months.

-Foreign Affairs lumps an unfair consular services fee of $25 - a kind of travel insurance for Canadians who might need assistance abroad - into the $85 cost of an adult passport.

-Several weaknesses in how Transport Canada has managed the transition to a new approach for overseeing air transportation safety.

-The federal Public Health Agency of Canada risks not reporting the spread of infectious diseases to the World Health Organization in a timely way because it lacks information-sharing agreements with the provinces.

The report tabled in Parliament marks the second time the auditor general has come down hard on the border services agency, created in December 2003 as part of a government reorganization to bolster national security. Previously she found weaknesses allowed many potentially dangerous people and goods to slip into the country.

The auditor general undertook the latest review following a request by the House of Commons public accounts committee to report on whether management of detentions and removals had improved under the border agency since 2003.

The agency has the power to detain foreign nationals and permanent residents considered a risk or danger to the public, and to remove people ruled ineligible to enter Canada.

In 2006-07, it held more than 9,000 people in its own facilities and another 3,500 in provincial cells.

Fraser found, however, the border agency failed to ensure it meets its standards for treatment of detainees. And it has not established backup plans for bed shortages. For instance, the Toronto holding centre has sometimes increased space by placing sleeping bags and blankets on the floor.

"In another region, holding cells for individuals awaiting hearings, which are designed for three people, had been used to hold 10, without enough space for some to sit."

New Democrat immigration critic Olivia Chow decried the conditions: "This is not Afghanistan. This is Canada. We can't treat our deportees that way."

Further, the auditor concluded the agency was not effectively managing detention costs, which amounted to more than $36 million in 2006-07.

Fraser says the agency has increasingly used alternatives to detention, such as releasing individuals on condition they post a sum of money. But she noted 368 of 2,038 cash bonds posted in 2004-05 were forfeited because the individuals failed to comply with terms of release.

The agency has located 178 of these people, removing 146 from Canada. But it doesn't know what happened to the remaining 190 who forfeited their bonds, and has issued warrants for their arrest. Eighteen have criminal histories.

"While infrequent, there have been cases where individuals who have been released on condition committed violent crimes," the report says.

Both the border agency and Citizenship and Immigration have power to allow people into the country under temporary resident permits even if they would otherwise be ineligible. Exceptions include humanitarian grounds or economic benefit to Canada - for instance a visiting performer or athlete with a criminal record.

The auditor found, however, that reasons for issuing the permits were often poorly documented and the border agency did not monitor whether the individuals with permits left the country upon their expiry.

Fraser found while the number of people removed from Canada annually has climbed in the last five years, there is still cause for concern.

As of September 2007 there were 63,000 people slated for removal. Among these were 22,000 facing formal orders, whose whereabouts were known to the border agency. However, the agency lacked contact information for another 41,000 due for removal under immigration warrants.

"How do we know that all 41,000 are harmless? We don't know," said Liberal public safety critic Ujjal Dosanjh, who wondered what Day was doing about the problem.

"What kind of a minister do we have?"

Part of the difficulty stems from an aborted plan to replace a computerized case management system, originally intended to be in place three years ago.

"As a result, the agency's ability to track individuals in the detention and removal process remains limited," the report says, adding five-year-old recommendations from her office on case tracking remain to be addressed.

Fraser noted that the precise number of people remaining in Canada illegally is impossible to determine due in part to the fact Ottawa does not record departures from the country.

Chow said the entire immigration system is broken, noting the thousands of removal lists include undocumented workers in trades like construction who are badly needed in Canada.

People considered violent or a potential flight risk are escorted by officers to their destination country, which can cost thousands of dollars per case and tallied more than $8 million in 2006-07. Fraser said there was no assurance escorted removals were being done cost-effectively.

The border services agency agreed with all of the auditor's recommendations for improvement.

The case and testimony of passport and Identity fraud: Ahmed Ressam.







He Isn't a Latino or Mexican!!!!!!! Ouch but they want to build a wall against Mexican Border because it's the major corridor of Terrorists. Right Lou Dobbs, Tommy Tancredo?.

When Ahmed Ressam was caught at the Canadian-U.S. border, he was using a false Canadian passport with the alias Benni Noris. He was carrying fake identification with another alias. And investigators soon discovered he had entered Canada using yet another fake passport, from France. He had also manipulated Canada's asylum system by applying for political asylum at the border, knowing that the Canadian authorities would refer his case to another agency and let him stay in Canada while he waited for his asylum hearing.

Here are short excerpts from his trial testimony specifically dealing with Ressam's use of fake passports and how his terrorist network relied on them:

Q. What type of travel document did you use to get into Canada?
A. A fake French passport.

Q. What city did you go to?
A. To the city of Montreal.

Q. What happened when you arrived to Montreal?
A. Immigration stopped me.

Q. At the airport?
A. Yes. Immigration stopped me at the airport. At that time, I requested asylum.

Q. And how did you request -- how did you request asylum?
A. I provided them with a false story about -- to request political asylum. They kept me at their center there and then they let me go.

Q. When they let you go, what city did you live in?
A. I lived in the city of Montreal.

Q. How long did you live in Montreal?
A. From 1994 to 1998.

Q. How did you support yourself during that four-year period?
A. I lived on welfare and theft.

Q. What do you mean by "theft"?
A. I used to steal tourists, rob tourists. I used to go to hotels and find their suitcases and steal them when they're not paying attention.

Q. And what would you do with the contents of those suitcases?
A. I used to take the money, keep the money, and if there are passports, I would sell them, and if there are Visa credit cards, I would use them up, and if there were any traveler's checks, I would use them or sell them.

Ressam describes how a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden's asked Ressam to provide the group with Canadian passports:

Q. What country did you see Abu Zubeida in?
A. In Pakistan.

Q. He was leader of the camps?
A. Yes.

Q. Did you discuss anything when you met with Abu Zubeida on your return back to Canada?
A. Yes. He asked me to send him some passports, some original passports if I had that he can use to give other, give to other people who had come to carry out operations in U.S.

Q. What type of passports was he looking for?
A. Canadian passports, but original.

Q. Did he tell you the names of the people he wanted those passports for?
A. He gave me some of the names.

We should take a look at the Immigration system in Canada.






Legal Foreign workers disappeared after arriving in Canada, P.E.I. mussel grower Says.


A mussel grower who took part in a federal foreign-worker program says he was burned to the tune of more than $50,000 when workers he brought over from Sri Lanka disappeared after two weeks.

Stephen Stewart, owner of Stewart Mussel Farms Inc. in Borden, P.E.I., testified Tuesday during a House of Commons standing committee on citizenship and immigration hearing in Fredericton.

He told the committee loopholes in immigration laws should be closed so employers can enforce contracts with foreign workers.

In May 2006, Stewart hired 11 workers from Sri Lanka through a private third party to work at his plant in Borden.

He told the committee it cost him more than $20,000 in return airfare for the workers, $20,000 for accommodations, the cost of a 12-seat van to provide transportation in and around Borden, and other incidentals in accordance with federal rules designed to accommodate foreign workers.

Stewart said the eight-month work agreement included a Canadian visa valid for a year.

"Two weeks after they arrived here they priced taxi fare to Ottawa, and two weeks after that they all disappeared," he told the committee.

Stewart said he complained to the Immigration Department and the RCMP.

"The RCMP searched my property and took the foreign workers' possessions they had left behind," he said. "Immigration officials said no laws were broken and there was nothing they could do.

Undocumented Mexicans takings American Jobs?

Anti Immigrant groups, Anchor news, like Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Glenn Spencer, Glenn Beck seems that the only violators of the Law and Stealers of American Jobs are Mexicans. Why?

On the front page of the Willamette Week today, an article written by Beth Slovak poked holes in the anti-immigrant claim that those entering the country are solely flooding through the southern Border.
In almost daily communiqué from anti-immigrant groups and radio talk show hosts, the focus always seems to be on Latinos as the sole “violators” of U.S. immigration laws and “stealers” of American jobs. With between 65,000 and 75,000 undocumented Canadians currently living in the United States, the continuous focus on Latinos begs the question of why anti-immigrant activists specifically target them with their hate speech, demagoguery and insults.
What the Willamette Week article demonstrates is the issue around immigration isn’t solely a Latino one. People from a range of ethnic persuasions and countries are affected and impacted in many ways making the case why it is important for Congress to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
He’s an... Illegal Eh-lien

He’s stealing our jobs and our women. Plus, he talks funny.By Beth Slovic

On a construction site in North Portland, an illegal immigrant pounds nails and cuts two-by-fours. With each swift motion, he’s breaking the law.
He could be the poster child for anti-illegal immigrant zealots: He’s nonchalant about his status for the most part, unconcerned about not paying U.S. taxes and indifferent to the fact that he’s “stealing” the job of a U.S. citizen.
But he passes through Portland mostly untouched by the spittle spewing from the seal-our-borders-now camp.

http://wweek.com/editorial/3415/10425/

Thank heavens for paperwork! Canadians Border crossing at early years. until 1894, records of immigration through Canada to the U.S. weren’t recorded.


Since many of our ancestors came to the U.S. through Canada in years prior to 1895, it would be great if this database included earlier records. I know of at least one of those famous made their way to the U.S. via Halifax. Unfortunately, until 1894, records of immigration through Canada to the U.S. weren’t recorded. In fact, this actually added to the appeal as many immigrants avoided immigration screening and hassles by choosing the Canadian route. In 1895 the U.S. government closed this loophole by requiring Canadian steamships and railroads to complete manifest forms and only provide transportation to U.S. destinations to immigrants that would have been allowed to enter the country via other U.S. ports.

What’s in the Records?

A variety of records are included in this database, including manifests, Primary Inspection Memorandums, Records of Registry, and Land Border Departure Records. The depth of information collected in these records varies. Some manifests are rich in detail, while later manifests, including some created by airlines, will be leaner with many only containing a first initial and surname, along with the date of arrival and point of embarkation and disembarkation.

Many of the records are on Form 1-Canada, titled “List or Manifest of Alien Passengers Applying for Admission to the United States from Foreign Contiguous Territory” and will include full name, age (with columns for years and months), and gender; marital status; occupation; literacy; nationality, and race or people; last permanent residence (city or town and country); name and complete address of nearest relative or friend in country whence alien came; final destination and whether they had a ticket to their final destination; by whom the passage was paid; how much money was in their possession; whether ever in the U.S. prior to this trip and if so, where; whether going to join a relative or friend and if so, who (including name and complete address); causes for deportment (including mental and physical health conditions); physical description; and place of birth (city or town and country).

It’s important to note that before October 1, 1906, only non-Canadian immigrants were recorded. Canadian-born immigrants are only included on records created after that date.

On the Primary Inspection Memorandum cards, the print is small and can be hard to read, although on the cards I viewed, the handwriting was legible. To help decipher the headings on each field, I checked out the National Archives website description of some of these records. It included a description of what was asked on these cards, as well as other records found in this database. Using this page I was better able to decipher the field headings that I found hard to read on the images.

Who is in These Records?

Searching by nationality proved to be interesting. There is a drop-down box with sixty nationalities that are represented in the database. The top ten were:

English - 898,713
French - 417,160
Scotch - 385,206 (Yes, it says “Scotch” in the menu, rather than Scots or Scottish. I’m assuming they chose this spelling because it is the way the records I viewed recorded the ethnicity.)
Irish - 279,654
Hebrew - 169,484
German - 162,178
Italian - 92,468
Polish - 90,868
Russian - 82,494
Finnish - 67,540

Noting that only 19,662 records came up for “Canadian,” it struck me as odd.

However, when searching for only a birthplace of Canada, I got 1,021,583 hits.
Searching for both birthplace of Canada and nationality of English, I get 298,172 hits; French, 280,331; Irish, 135,159; and Scotch, 132,359. An assortment of other nationalities rounded out the Canadian-born people represented in the database.

So, for this database, you can use place of birth as a more reliable search term, and as with any database, start wide and then narrow your search by rotating various criteria in and out of the search boxes.

Some of the records don’t even list nationality or birthplace.
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/immigration/northern-ny-state-arrivals.html

Ironic but truthfully when we talking about to secure our borders and ports. Why isn't somebody fencing in Miami, Florida, San Diego Beaches, where is the fence at Malibu beach, Long Beach, Ca. Port, Oakland,Ca port? The real terrorist they caught was coming out of Canada with his trunk full of bombs.

The Border Patrol agent was a 30-year veteran. He walked me across a patch of desolation to the Mexican border. There was no border fence there yet. Just Arizona desert, a dusty dry creekbed, and Mexican desert beyond, indistinguishable from the United States.
If you want to hear philosophical reflections from an agent, you have to talk to old-timers. The hundreds of new Homeland Security-era officers who have flooded the border are extremely well trained - the Border Patrol academy is a monster among law enforcement training programs - and they are certainly gung-ho. But the old guys will tell you the new ones don't know the territory very well. There are fine points it might take 30 years to learn.
"My dad was a rancher," the veteran agent said. "I'm a rancher. I come out here and you know who I chase? Ranch hands and farmers." He wiped his brow, toed some possibly Mexican dirt. "Buddy, I am chasing my own people."

This hotly contested stretch of sand and cinders stands to become a beneficiary of the $1.2 billion border fence that will seal off the southern American border. Well, it will seal off part of it. OK - it will seal off small areas of the border. Just east of where we stood, for example, the fence will stop. There are big scary mountains in place that will be included in the plan as natural immigration barriers. These are the same mountains over which many of the undocumented are already walking to avoid the good men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol.
But, the thinking goes, we have to start somewhere. On the Mexican side, among much gnashing of teeth, there is a joke that has been circulating the whole time. The gist of it is: Let them put up a fence! They'll hire us to build it! Then, when it's done, we'll run the tourist concessions and the taco stands. Then, when they get tired of it, they'll hire us to tear it down!

What are you getting for your 1 billion tax dollars? Well, you're getting a little less than 700 miles of fence. Much of it double-fencing, but substantial segments to be single-fence. That's the kind of security that has so successfully kept kids out of closed softball fields and skinny-dippers from midnight visits to neighborhood swimming pools.

Al Qaeda will weep with frustration when they encounter it and just go home.
Critics like to point out that the plan had originally called for triple-fencing, but somehow the folks who brought us Katrina relief can't manage that on a budget.

Critics also seem to enjoy reminding us that the border is 2,000 miles long. Of course, that would be as the crow flies. If you ironed out the Southwest, spread its many mountains (Homeland Security Immigration Barriers) flat, then pulled the squiggles and turns of the Rio Grande straight, how long would it really be? Buddy, that's a lot of fence for them ranchers to ride.
What is a border? According to Webster's, it is a margin. If one were to look at the margins of the United States, 700 miles of rockin' chain-link might not seem like enough. Although it's macho - it lends the desert a sense of WWF Steel Cage Death Match - a glance at the Canadian border suggests that it's even less secure than we hope. That same Border Patrol veteran pointed out to me that the one real terrorist they caught was coming out of Canada with his trunk full of bombs. And, of course, those 9/11 bastards were "legal aliens."
However, if we keep staring at the map with Zen clarity, a new revelation offers itself. I'll warn you, it takes work. But we suddenly see there is another border of the United States. It's called a coastline. Talk about unprotected. Why isn't somebody fencing in Miami? They hate us for our thongs, people. Where is the fence at Malibu?
Of course, terrorism is only part of the paradigm - it's illegal immigration, stupid.
California has long struggled with remaining a good neighbor while bringing the hammer down. It might have rankled to read the insensitive Mexican jokes about the border fence, but the Golden State Fence Company actually did hire "illegals" to build border fences in San Diego. Not only that, of course, but they seem to have used the undocumented to build fences at military bases, immigration jails and Border Patrol stations. They were fined $5 million in 2006; if you think about it, when you combine the cost-cutting involved in the illegal workforce and the hefty fine, the actual cost of the border fence might have shrunk by several percentage points. Voters and columnists might express outrage, but federal border agents are realists and ironists - they shake their heads and laugh. They know a snafu when they see it.
It's one thing to fence off a few miles of California or Arizona. It is quite another to try to fence off the meandering bed of the mighty Rio Grande in Texas. Somehow, much of the border has remained, for all its media and political notoriety, invisible. Nothing reveals this more than the Rio Grande. (Or, as those darned Mexicans call it, El Rio Bravo - the untamed or brave river.) One of the most interesting border books to appear in recent days is Keith Bowden's "The Tecate Journals." He somewhat maniacally canoes the entire length of the river. The book shows a major American riverine ecosystem that remains ignored and reviled - perhaps because it is also the border barrier of record. Beavers and deer - who knew?
Strangely, a coalition of Texas mayors came up with a proposal to strengthen the border while avoiding the fence. They suggested that the river itself be dredged and deepened and widened. The natural demarcation line between our nations, in other words, could be revived and cleaned up to do its ancient work. Fences? We don't need no stinkin' fences! A plan due to fail.

The problem in Texas is simple - 180 miles of proposed fence must follow the river, but not get too close to the river, because the river itself is the classic illegal alien and will change course, wiggle under fences, even erode banks and topple fences and open big gaps. Obviously, Mexico will stop at nothing - if an old truck won't bust the fence, they'll send a river. So the fence must, at certain points, be built up to a mile from the banks of the river.
Unfortunately, landowners (ranchers and farmers again) have lived on this land for hundreds of years. Some farm plots along the river have been in the same families since 1767. Mexicans were living there eating frijoles before American revolutionaries ate baked beans at the signing of the Constitution? That's awkward.

Although it is true that everyone ought to be willing to suffer for the security of the nation, in Brownsville, the fence line has cut off a section of the college's soccer field and given it back to Mexico. Gen. Santa Anna is rising from his grave, rubbing his hands in glee: He's actually getting back some of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The Chicago Tribune quoted the mayor of Brownsville on Jan. 16: "To appease people in middle America, they are going to kill our communities along the border. The rest of America has no idea how we live our lives here. We are linked by the Rio Grande, not divided by it." Linked? By a border? Not divided? What a concept.
If Americans want security, then they should get real security. If you really want a border fence, build a real border fence. I have some nephews in Tijuana who need work. But please, Mr. Chertoff - fence off Cannery Row while you still can.

Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of "The Devil's Highway" and "The Hummingbird's Daughter." He teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His blog is http://lavistaluisurrea. blogspot.com

Canadian Court Frees al-Qaida Suspect but ordered him to remain under house arrest.







TORONTO - A Canadian court freed suspected al-Qaida collaborator Mohamed Harkat from jail on Friday, but ordered him to remain under house arrest until his next hearing.An Algerian refugee living in Ontario since 1995, Harkat was arrested in December 2002 on suspicions that he is an Islamic extremist and member of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Harkat has vehemently denied the allegations.Harkat spent 3 1/2 years in an Ontario jail under Canada's controversial security certificate regime, which allows authorities to hold a detainee indefinitely without charges and lets the government keep any evidence secret.Harkat was released on bail in June 2006 because of delays in his deportation. But he was arrested earlier this week for allegedly violating bail conditions.According to authorities, Harkat is supposed to live with both of his bail guarantors, his mother-in-law and her partner. However, the court heard that the couple now longer lives together in the same house full time.In a ruling Friday, Federal Court Justice Eleanor Dawson said Harkat will be freed, but must stay inside his Ottawa residence until a court hearing Monday.





When Harkat was in court Thursday contesting his arrest, fellow foreign-born terror suspect Adil Charkaoui, who was also arrested and held under the security certificate regime, was also before the courts to stave off his deportation.The Moroccan-born Charkaoui, a school teacher and part-time graduate student in Montreal, is also accused of being an al-Qaida sympathizer who should be deported. Charkaoui spent 21 months in jail before being released on bail in 2005.Charkaoui denies any terrorist ties. The court reserved judgment on the case Thursday and set no date or a ruling.Charkaoui and Harkat are among a trio of complainants who argued successfully last year that Canada's federal legislation dealing with the deportation of terror suspects was unconstitutional.The Supreme Court of Canada ruled last February that the security certificate process that led to Harkat's incarceration is fundamentally unjust. A proposed new law is now being studied by the federal government.