Canadian National Post: Bordering on paranoid

[Twoller]

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/08...near-victoria/

Bordering on paranoid: Inside the U.S/Canada divide near Victoria

Brian Hutchinson/National Post

Aug 13, 2011 – 9:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Aug 12, 2011 9:33 PM ET

PORT ANGELES, Washington • Christian Sanchez thought he was one of the good guys, a veteran U.S. border patrol agent stopping foreign criminals and terrorists from sneaking onto American soil. Two years ago, he accepted a transfer from southern California to this small blue-collar city. “The Port Angeles station was described as one of the exciting new places to be,” he recalls.

Not so, he discovered. Port Angeles is no San Diego, his former bailiwick. Perched on the edge of the remote Olympic Peninsula, on the cold Strait of Juan de Fuca, its closest neighbour is Victoria, B.C., not widely known as a terrorism launchpad. Marijuana smugglers occasionally drift across the strait, but the U.S. Coast Guard takes care of them. Mr. Sanchez found himself with little to do but drive up and down the peninsula in his border patrol vehicle, for 10 hours at a time, “wasting gasoline” and blowing taxpayers’ dollars. Dozens of other border agents in Port Angeles do the same, he claims. They have no casework, he says. Their border station is “a black hole.” And yet it’s expanding; Mr. Sanchez wonders why. He’s not alone. Some residents on the peninsula say border patrol agents are just being used to flush out illegal migrants, men and women working in local forests and fields.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Sanchez blew the whistle, on his own station and on the Department of Homeland Security, the federal department that oversees U.S. customs, border protection and border patrol. The disgruntled border patrol agent appeared before a panel of U.S. congressmen in Washington, D.C., and alleged that he and his fellow officers in Port Angeles are spinning their wheels and wasting money in the name of national security, in an environment where few, if any, real threats exist. He calls the situation “a betrayal of taxpayers” in these hard times.

“It’s shameful for me to admit that we, as men, have no purpose [in Port Angeles],” Mr. Sanchez told the congressmen, members of a bipartisan caucus that examines transparency issues. “I could not stop denying it to myself. There was no work to be done.”

Mr. Sanchez says he’s been ordered to “lie” and claim overtime pay for work he has not performed. He has refused, and for that he’s been ostracized by certain colleagues and supervisors. Worse, he claims his family has been placed under surveillance. Their movements are recorded, their mail is opened, their vehicles tracked. They are being “terrorized,” he suggests, by the same federal law enforcement agency that he is supposed to serve.

Could these be the ramblings of a paranoid person? Mr. Sanchez acknowledges that he’s been asked by one supervisor to seek psychological help; this, he adds, is part of the harassment campaign launched against him.

Mr. Sanchez once also served as his border station’s chaplain, until he was removed from that position in February, this after he had issued an internal memo that outlined his concerns. “[As chaplain] I’ve talked to agents who confidentially expressed that they are depressed and are going ‘crazy’ because there’s no casework to do,” he explained to the congressmen. “Up on the northern border, there’s nothing to do. There are no gangs doing cross-border activity. I haven’t seen anything [or] it’s rare, in the two years I’ve been there. A lot of the agents are just going stir crazy for not doing anything.”

Officers attached to the U.S. border patrol’s public affairs unit in Washington State would not comment on Mr. Sanchez’s accusations. Requests for additional information were ignored.

Border agents in Port Angeles once apprehended an Algerian member of al Qaeda, Ahmed Ressam; he had crossed the strait on a passenger ferry from Victoria, his rented car packed with explosives. His destination was Los Angeles International Airport, which he intended to destroy. But that arrest was a dozen years ago.

Seven years later — and five years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — the remote Port Angeles border patrol station still coped with just four officers, a “reasonable” size, says Mr. Sanchez. When he arrived in 2009, the station had ballooned to 24 agents; it now has 40, he claims.

Homeland Security has embarked on a long spending spree, staffing up and building bigger border patrol stations along the northern boundary. These are boom times for American border stations, with the ranks of patrol agents multiplying and large new facilities appearing from Port Angeles all the way east to Houlton, Maine. Stations along the long B.C. boundary seem to have special priority; new U.S. border patrol complexes are under construction or planned in four different locations. These include a $15-million building on 22 acres near Oroville, Wash., south of Osoyoos, B.C. and a $5.7-million building under construction in Port Angeles; the latter will be large enough to house 50 agents. It will also include an agents’ fitness centre, dog kennels, and a 12-metre-high radio tower.

The expansion might reassure some citizens on both sides of the line, but opposition has formed in Port Angeles and neighbouring towns. People fear their freedoms and liberties are being compromised, their ways of life threatened. Even a local sheriff and a local mayor have expressed concerns about the build-up of border patrol agents, who seem to have little actual border work.

Alex Hepler is a retired U.S. Marine living on the Olympic Peninsula. We met this week in a local restaurant with two other residents concerned about the border patrol expansion along the Canadian boundary, a local fireplace builder named Jim Buckley, and a social activist named Libby Palmer. Mr. Hepler takes issue with the “news blackout” allegedly imposed on the peninsula. Border patrol arrest records and other data that are routinely made public in other jurisdictions are not disclosed in their sector, he says. “The border patrol has never justified its tenfold increase in local manpower,” he noted. “I suspect their arrest data would not help justify this increase, which is why the information isn’t released. But we have a right to it. What is this, the Soviet Union?”

Mr. Buckley jumped in. Rather than protecting the U.S. border with Canada, which he claims needs needs little attention, the agents are looking for undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America. “They routinely board buses on the peninsula and remove men and women without [proper immigration] papers,” said Mr. Buckley. Usually, they are deported.

“So, if I’m out there birdwatching or something, is the border police going to come after me?” asked Mr. Hepler.

“Only if you look Hispanic,” said Mr. Buckley.

“Then that’s a problem,” Mr. Hepler replied. “It’s a police state. It’s un-American.”

Ms. Palmer nodded in agreement and shared stories of foreign workers running from the border patrol. In May, a pair of residents from Mexico were in a local forest and picking salal, a wild plant used in floral decorations. They were stopped by a Forest Service officer; a border police agent then arrived. Seeing the agent, one of the salal pickers ran off on foot. In June, his body was found in a river; he had drowned. According to the Seattle Weekly newspaper, the deceased had three grown children living in Forks, a rough and tumble town on the peninsula and home to hundreds of Mexican-Americans and undocumented foreign workers.

The death ignited another sort of controversy in Forks; people there say the expanded border patrol presence has upset what was a peaceful melting pot of cultures: whites, Native Americans, Hispanics, rednecks, hippies. “There’s now an atmosphere of fear in our community,” Forks Mayor Bryon Monohon told me on Wednesday.

The Forks town council met this week with border patrol agents in an effort to smooth waters. But Mayor Monohon says some misunderstandings remain. “What are the border patrol’s real priorities? That’s a good question,” he says. “What the agents are doing now, lurking around in the woods, well, it’s just creepy. It’s so strange.”

He hasn’t met with Christian Sanchez, the whistleblower, but he’d like to. So would a lot of folks. He’s reported to be back from Washington and on the job, but he’s not talking anymore. “Because of the treacherous, isolated environment in which Mr. Sanchez is working,” says a lawyer working on his behalf, “for now he will not be going beyond his testimony.”

National Post

I don't get it. What kind of border patrol agents object to hunting down illegal immigrants? If they are illegal immigrants, then somewhere they evaded the border patrol. Wouldn't pursuing illegal immigrants help them to better understand how to patrol the borders? These guys shouldn't be patrolling any borders unless its Borders Books at the shopping mall.

[Ayatollahgondola]

Originally Posted by Twoller

I don't get it. What kind of border patrol agents object to hunting down illegal immigrants?.

The kind planted by some faction of the Obama regime to discredit the patrol, and have funds cut to that area so the illegals and those who profit from them can have an easier time practicing their corrupt ways.