Citizenship checks irk San Juan Islanders

FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. – The people of the San Juan Islands tend to be independent sorts, espousing a do-it-yourself, leave-me-be ethos as natural and ever-present as the tide.

But for many of the 17,000 people of this island county, the normal rhythms of small-town life have hit a dissonant chord lately.

A couple of months ago, the U.S. Border Patrol began occasional “spot checks” of every vehicle and passenger arriving in Anacortes off state ferries, the lifeline between these islands and the mainland.

A number of people have complained that islanders are being unfairly treated and questioned, even though they haven’t left the country and normally wouldn’t be subject to such scrutiny.

Terms like “police state” are hurled around, as they say the searches are illegal, unconstitutional and just a ruse to catch illegal immigrants and petty drug users.

The Border Patrol responds that the stops are annoying but necessary, the cost of keeping the country safe. It maintains that a terrorist could easily use the same maze of waterways and islands that has long harbored smugglers, rumrunners and drug dealers.

But in this comparatively affluent county, where there isn’t a single stoplight, angry islanders are unsatisfied. They’ve complained to their congressional delegates and recently asked the American Civil Liberties Union to monitor the situation and provide legal advice.

And they have rallied around a family who immigrated illegally from Mexico years ago and were recently caught up in the dragnet. They raised bail and paid their rent while they were detained.

San Juan Islanders are used to customs inspections in Anacortes if they take the ferry that comes from Sidney, B.C. However, they were never subjected to checks on domestic ferry runs.

That changed in February, when federal agents started corralling everyone off domestic ferries into a fenced-off area in Anacortes, questioning them about their citizenship. It happens maybe twice a week; no one has any way to know if they will be stopped.

When islanders talk about taking a ferry to the mainland, the joke around town is “I’m going back to America,” said David Jones, the mayor of Friday Harbor.

Attorney Carolyn de Roos recently asked three Seattle lawyers to speak at two meetings about residents’ rights and legal options. Their advice: Don’t answer any questions.

Because residents who board domestic ferries don’t cross an international border, they “have a right not to reveal anything about their legal status,” said Matt Adams, an attorney with the Seattle-based Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and a member of the ACLU.

“Once they’re inside the country, Immigration doesn’t have the right to detain someone without reasonable suspicion,” Adams said. Ethnic background, skin color or language don’t meet that threshold.

But if someone admits to being in the country illegally, Border Patrol can make an arrest.

Between late February and last week, 43 people – 38 of them from Mexico – have been arrested in the ferry stops, said Joe Giuliano, the Border Patrol’s deputy chief patrol agent for the Blaine border sector. An additional 141 people from 33 countries were interviewed by agents before they were let go.

Late last year, rumors began circulating among the islands’ Hispanics that the Border Patrol was apprehending illegal immigrants who rode the ferries to Anacortes.

So for three months the Sanabria family – Antonio, Amelia and their daughters, Guadalupe, 18, and Carmen, 15 – never left Friday Harbor.

When they didn’t hear of any arrests, they decided to chance it in February so Guadalupe could take her driver’s license test on the mainland. A Border Patrol agent approached their pickup as they got off the ferry. Antonio Sanabria whispered to his family in Spanish: “Oh, no. They’ve got us.”

It never occurred to them that they could refuse to answer the agents’ questions, said Guadalupe Sanabria, who was 2 when her parents illegally came to the U.S. from Michoacan, Mexico.

The family was sent to a federal detention facility in Pennsylvania. Guadalupe phoned friends back in Friday Harbor.

Members of the community managed to raise enough money to get the family out on a $30,000 bond, and they were back in Friday Harbor by the end of March their plane tickets also courtesy of folks back home.

Even so, the Sanabrias know they will probably lose their bid to stay in the United States.

“I’m really thankful our community helped us because if not for them, we wouldn’t be back,” Guadalupe said. “It’s in God’s hands. We just hope someday there’s a way for us to be legal.”