Meeting Held At Selfridge To Discuss Border Protection
Meeting Held At Selfridge To Discuss Border Protection
ClickonDetroit ^ | August 1, 2006 | AP
Meeting Held At Selfridge To Discuss Border Protection
Witnesses Say U.S.-Canadian Border Is Magnet For Smuggling
POSTED: 3:49 pm EDT August 1, 2006
HARRISON TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- The 4,000-mile U.S.-Canadian border is a natural magnet for those who smuggle people, drugs and other contraband, witnesses told the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, which met Tuesday at a suburban Detroit military base.
In addition, the outbreak of fighting in the Middle East has heightened the need for detecting and stopping people with links to terrorism from crossing the country's northern border, said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Patrick W. Brennan, commander of the agency's Detroit district.
"The movement of persons with possible terrorist connections into the U.S. from Canada is of grave concern to the Coast Guard and all of our (Department of Homeland Security) partners, as well as our Canadian partners," Brennan said Tuesday at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, not far from the Canadian border.
The Detroit district contains "several of our nation's most critical pieces of infrastructure" linking the two countries, Brennan said. They include the Ambassador Bridge, which alone carries 40 percent of the trade between the two countries, he said.
The Ambassador Bridge, Detroit-Windsor auto tunnel, Blue Water Bridge between Port Huron, Mich., and Sarnia, Ontario, as well as nearby train tunnels, are crucial economic links between the deeply connected trading partners, he said.
"Without these trade links, the auto industry, and many other important industries, would grind to a halt in just a few hours or days due to their reliance on just-in-time inventory," Brennan said.
Several committee members and other House members from Michigan who attended the hearing raised questions about the ability of federal and local agencies to communicate with each other in the field.
In Macomb County, home of the base, local authorities have complained about the ineffectiveness of such links, said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich. He said that while a radio system is supposed to link the federal and state agencies, it has not worked in practice.
"As I understand it, the Coast Guard has not been able and willing to use it," Levin said.
The sheriff of nearby St. Clair County told the committee that his deputies are frustrated with the difficulty communicating with border patrol agents.
"If we do not have that interoperability, we have nothing," Sheriff Dan Lane said.
The area chief of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency said his agents are making progress getting the equipment, and the operating protocols, that they need to keep in direct contact with local police.
The Great Lakes section of the border is particularly challenging because of the narrowness of some of the waterways -- in some places only a few hundred yards -- and the ability to disappear into large urban areas, Chief Patrol Agent John Bates testified.
Local police and residents play a big part in limiting illegal border crossings, Bates said, with about 75 percent of the arrests beginning with such tips.
The key do doing a better job, Bates said, is much different from what is needed to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, where the federal government is massing agents and building hundreds of miles of fences. Advanced surveillance technology is a key component, he said.
"What we're looking for is not a fence," he said. "It is a virtual fence."
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