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Sunday, October 14, 2001
By Jack Kelly, Post-Gazette National Affairs Writer
NIAGARA, Ontario -- The longest undefended border in the world is no longer the easy-going "where-you-headed?" kind of boundary it was before Sept. 11.
With as many as five of the Sept. 11 hijackers having crossed into the United States from Canada, the U.S.-Canadian border is now a place where suspicion rules, questions are asked and trunks are tossed. If you are driving to Canada on business or pleasure these days, bring your passport or birth certificate, and plenty of patience.
Crossing last week into Windsor, Ontario from Detroit, the single busiest entry point, a photographer and I got just over the Ambassador Bridge when we were directed by Canadian customs officials to a parking lot.
A friendly but firm inspector told us to get out of the car. When we tried to strike up a conversation with some neighbors -- a young couple with small children in a minivan, and three elderly Toledoans seeking a day of fun at the Windsor casino -- she told us not to talk to anybody and then spent 25 minutes opening every piece of luggage and looking under the hood.
It took a lot longer, a little more than an hour, to cross back into the United States the next day. The Americans let us remain in our car, but their inspection was no less thorough.
It was much the same going both north and south at Niagara Falls, the second-busiest crossing along a border that stretches nearly 4,000 miles.
There are 113 designated land crossings, of which 62 are unguarded at night, and vast stretches of sparsely populated mountains, prairie and forest. So it's no easy matter keeping a determined person from moving across the line in either direction.
The United States has 9,000 Customs, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Border Patrol personnel guarding the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, and only 965 on the Canadian border, which is twice as long. There are only 2,400 Canadian customs officials, some of them college students working part time, to cover all of Canada's ports of entry.
The U.S.-Canada land border is the busiest in the world, and by far the most important economically. Canada's Customs and Revenue Agency reported 111 million entries at all Canadian ports last year, 87 million of them at land ports along the U.S.-Canada border.
The United States and Canada are each other's largest trading partners. Some 25 percent of all U.S. exports go north, while 87 percent of Canadian exports come south. About 7,000 trucks a day cross the border at the Ambassador Bridge alone. Inspections which once took minutes -- if they were conducted at all -- now take substantially longer.
Canada: haven for terrorists?
Vince Cannistaro, former counter-terrorism chief for the CIA, said as many as five of the 19 hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field southeast of Pittsburgh on Sept. 11 may have crossed into the United States from Canada. Attorney General John Ashcroft acknowledged last week that "several" entered from Canada.
There have been others.
Nabil al-Marabh, arrested by the FBI in connection with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, had earlier been picked up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after he had been found hiding in the back of a truck trying to cross into the United States at Niagara Falls. He was carrying a forged Canadian passport and citizenship card.
Al-Marabh had been rejected for refugee status in 1994 and deported, but he re-entered Canada with forged travel documents. Caught for a second time, he was released into the custody of a Muslim cleric in Toronto. From there he fled to Michigan, and then to Illinois, where the FBI nabbed him.
In December of 1999, a vigilant customs inspector at Port Angeles, Wash., caught Ahmed Ressam trying to cross the border with 130 pounds of explosive RDX and timing devices in the trunk of his car.
Ressam, an Algerian who had come to Montreal in 1994 on a false passport, had slipped in and out of Canada in 1998 to attend one of Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. He was planning to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar entered the United States from Canada in 1997, intending to plant a bomb in the New York City subway system. He'd been living in Canada since 1993, when he'd won refugee status by claiming that as a Palestinian, he was being persecuted by Israel. He was nabbed by U.S. officials on his third attempt to cross the border illegally, and in 1998 was sentenced to life in prison.
Hani Abd al-Rahim al-Sayegh, a suspect in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks at a U.S. Air Force base in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in Ottawa, where he was studying English and working part-time.
John Thompson, a former Canadian army officer who is managing director of the Mackenzie Institute, a Toronto think tank, said several conspirators in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center were planning to escape through Canada.
"The escape route lay through southern Ontario, where airline tickets and new identification were waiting for them," Thompson told a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives last year.
These and other incidents have given Canada a reputation as a haven for terrorists. In January of 1999, the Committee on Security and Intelligence of the Canadian senate issued a report which said, in effect, that Canada's immigration policies were a threat to the security of the United States.
"Canada is still primarily a venue of opportunity to support, plan or mount attacks elsewhere, or as a conduit to the United States," the committee said. "Canada has an obligation to its neighbors not to expose them to undue security risks through a porous refugee determination system."
Ward Elcock, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said in a 1998 speech to Parliament that "with perhaps the singular exception of the United States, there are more international terror groups active [in Canada] than any other country."
Citing sources in the intelligence service, Stewart Bell of Toronto's National Post said: "Money raised in Canada has been used to finance bin Laden and his terror network; equipment with military uses has been bought here; passports have been stolen and forged to help Islamic militants move freely; operations have been planned; terrorists have hidden out, and Internet sites have been registered in Toronto and Montreal to promote the jihad."
Canadians like tighter security
American officials want Canada to tighten its rules for admitting people from overseas, and to do a better job of tracking the whereabouts of those who are admitted to the country. If Canada doesn't tighten security at its airports, as well, the United States will have to tighten security along the land border, no matter how much inconvenience and economic loss that might cause.
The chief bone of contention between the United States and Canada is Canada's refugee policy. Those who seek refugee status are permitted to remain in the country while their applications are being processed, which usually takes a long time. Those who are denied refugee status can remain in the country pending appeal. A 1985 decision of Canada's supreme court extended to those seeking to enter Canada the same rights as Canadian citizens.
Tom Kent, who was responsible for immigration reforms during the administration of Prime Minister Lester Pearson (1963-68), said this means anyone who can afford a plane ticket to a Canadian airport has a good chance of staying in Canada.
"It's an easy entry for people with other motives, including those with terrorist intentions," Kent told the Ottawa Citizen.
Canada lets in about 30,000 refugees a year, and has no idea where most of them are. The Citizen and Immigration Department has outstanding deportation warrants for 27,000 foreigners whose applications for asylum have been rejected.
"Each year immigration adds about one percent to our population, a number so large that penetration by terrorism becomes unavoidable," said David Harris, who used to be chief of strategic planning for the intelligence service and now runs a private security firm in Ottawa. "Absurd refugee laws commonly see ostensible applicants disappearing underground in Canada and the U.S."
Thompson, Kent, Harris and most Canadian law enforcement officials say reform of those laws is needed to protect Canada and the United States. Equally important, they say, is to provide much more funding for Canada's grossly understaffed border and police agencies.
The overwhelming majority of Canadians favor creating a joint North American security perimeter, according to a poll released Sept. 30 by Ipsos-Reid. Ninety percent of respondents said immigrants to Canada should be required to have a photo ID similar to the U.S. green card; 85 percent said a security perimeter based mostly on U.S. rules should be created; 70 percent said border posts should be jointly staffed by U.S. and Canadian officials, rather than the separate posts which exist today.
The government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, citing a desire to preserve Canadian sovereignty, has been reluctant to move in this direction.
But the leaders of the opposition Alliance and Conservative parties, and police associations in Canada have endorsed the concept of a North American security perimeter.
A U.S. Customs inspector inspects vehicles on the New York side of Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls. (Allan Deitrich/Post-Gazette National Bureau) 
Joe Lubass of Niagara Falls, N.Y., walks across the Rainbow Bridge. (Allan Deitrich/Post-Gazette National Bureau)