Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Sheriff Assails Security At Canadian Border Lack Of Agents Makes U.S. Vulnerable To Terrorism, Whatcom Official Says

Associated Press

Immigration laws and the diversion of U.S. Border Patrol agents to the Mexican border have increased the nation’s vulnerability to terrorism, Whatcom County Sheriff Dale Brandland says.

Brandland noted Friday that one of two men charged with plotting a suicide bombing in Brooklyn, N.Y. was caught trying to sneak into Washington state from British Columbia twice last year. The man was arrested a third time, on Jan. 14, along with two other men at a bus station in Bellingham while trying to leave the area.

“It’s so easy to walk across our borders,” Brandland said. “I’m very fearful that we’re going to have a major terrorist incident in this country before we do something about our immigration laws.

Cary James, head of the U.S. Border Patrol office in Blaine, said he is chronically shortstaffed. Blaine is the most heavily traveled crossing between Canada and the United States west of Detroit.

“It makes me sick to think that I’m so short on people here,” James said. “A couple of weeks ago, we only had one guy for the whole border.”

Still, he was asked for more agents to send south.

“I don’t have anybody to send,” James said. “Now that this (New York case) hit, they’re backing off.”

“No one, I mean no one, should be surprised at this whole thing,” Brandland said. “The immigration laws we have in place and the minimal staff we have at this border are disgraceful.”

Many illegal aliens sneak back across the border after being arrested in Whatcom County and deported, some more than once, he said.

“I’m frustrated with their policy of pulling our people out of here and sending them down to Arizona,” the sheriff said.

He also called some immigration laws “ludicrous.”

“If you want to deport someone, you have to get the permission of the country (they came from) to take them back,” he said. “If the country doesn’t want them back, you’re stuck with them. The whole deportation process right now is a joke.”

Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, 23, of Hebron, and Lafi Khalil, 22, were shot and wounded by police in a raid Thursday on their apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y.

A federal law enforcement official told the Associated Press the two men were just hours away from pulling off a suicide bombing at a busy New York subway station.

The Bellingham Herald reported Friday that:

On June 24, 1996, authorities arrested Abu Mezer and another man after they tried to walk across the U.S.-Canada border east of Ross Lake in the Cascade Mountains. Abu Mezer was deported, a federal official said.

On June 29, 1996, authorities arrested Abu Mezer again after he walked into Blaine through Peace Arch Park, avoiding the border checkpoint. Authorities deported him to Canada a second time.

On Jan. 14, Abu Mezer, Mohamed Mustafa Khalil, 22, of Jordan, and Firas Taleb Mohamed, 21, of Baghdad were arrested at a bus station in Bellingham trying to leave the area.

The other two men were returned to Canada, but Abu Mezer then applied for political asylum, saying he had been accused in Israel of having been in a terrorist organization.

Abu Mezer withdrew the asylum request and was ordered last week to leave the country voluntarily by Aug. 23.