Ontario Arrests Highlight Difficulty In Securing U.S.-Canadian Border

WASHINGTON — The weekend bust of an alleged Ontario terrorist ring with links to the United States and half a dozen other countries has spotlighted the challenge this country faces in trying to control the 4,000-mile long border it shares with Canada.

Some analysts see the arrests as a reminder of the threat posed by dozens of terrorist cells that are thought to be active just north of an easily-crossed, thinly guarded border.

"It's an enormous worry," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors tighter immigration controls. "It's an enormous country with an enormous international population and the border is basically unguarded."

Canadian police arrested 12 adults and 5 teens in the Toronto area over the weekend. They are charged with a number of terror-related activities and with purchasing three tons of ammonium nitrate, three times as much of this fertilizer as was used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people.

Canadian and U.S. investigators are looking at possible links between the Toronto suspects and suspected Islamic militants in the United States, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Britain, Denmark and Sweden, a sign that Canadian terrorist cells are knitted into a global web of militant activists.

"Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism," the country's prime minister, Stephen Harper, said Monday.

Canada has one of the most liberal asylum policies in the world.

"Anybody, anywhere in the world can come," said retired Canadian diplomat James Bissett, former head of the Canadian Immigration Service. As a result, he said, "In Canada, we have a large number of terrorist organizations that are here and are active."

In fact, Canada is home to militants believed to be active in dozens of terrorist cells, Canadian intelligence officials have asserted.

"There are residents in Canada that are graduates of terrorist training camps and campaigns, including experienced combatants from conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere," Canada's deputy director of intelligence operations, Jack Hooper, testified last week before the Canadian Senate's Committee on National Security and Defense.

The groups are essentially located in America's northern back yard - 85 percent of Canada's 32 million people live within 100 miles of the U.S. border - and the gate is wide open.

"The northern border has always been a source of concern, because it's so vast," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a San Diego-based union that represents U.S. border agents.

The U.S.-Canadian border stretches some 4,000 miles, at least a quarter of which is rugged and remote wilderness, much of it public park land, tribal grounds and wildlife preserves. For that expanse of land, there are about 1,000 U.S. border patrol agents, about a fourth of whom are on duty at any one time.

"You have 200 to 225 agents to protect 4,000 miles of border," said Bonner. "It's not the kind of stuff that makes you sleep well at night."

Apart from border control agents, there are U.S. Customs inspectors and immigration officials who monitor designated border crossing points. By intent, though, controls at U.S.-Canadian border crossing are loose.

The United States and Canada are tied by the largest international trading partnership in the world. Two-way trade amounted to $483 billion last year alone. That means about $1.2 billion worth of automobiles, lumber, salmon and other goods cross the U.S.-Canadian border each day. In addition, there are 200 million border crossings each year, as about 13 million Americans visit the Canadian provinces annually for business and vacations.

To promote those ties, travelers can generally cross the border without a passport: flashing a driver's license is all that's required.

Congress has directed the Department of Homeland Security to tighten up those requirements. By the end of next year, crossing the U.S.-Canada border will require a passport or other DHS approved travel document. The State Department is working on a new kind of document that would cost less and be quicker to get than a passport, but the program is still under development.

That isn't to say U.S.-Canadian border officials aren't effective. They thwarted a terrorist plot in 1999, arresting a man trying to enter the United States and head to the Los Angeles airport with a trunk load of explosives.

Border control analysts say, however, that the revelation of that plot points to the larger issue of U.S. vulnerability to Canadian-based terrorist cells.

"We got lucky," said Keeley. "We've got to move beyond sort of crossing our fingers and hoping for good luck."

Increasing the number of border patrol officers would help, said Bonner. Training, equipping and paying a first-year agent costs U.S. taxpayers roughly $150,000, he said. Once they're up and running, though, an agent with five years on the job makes about $50,000 a year.

"It is money well spent," in Bonner's view, "to try and intercept terrorists before they carry out any further attacks, rather than going around and locking the barn door after the horse has gotten out."

Ultimately, though, Canada must crack down on who comes into its country and how groups are permitted to behave, Bissett said.

"Beefing up the border is helpful, but it's not the answer," he said.

"We should look upon North America as a security perimeter, and that's where we should be paying more attention," said Bissett. "Once they get into Canada or the United States, the border's not going to stop them from crossing over."