North border crossings born of desperation

By Carolyn Thompson
The Associated Press

DON HUEPEL / AP U.S. Border Patrol Agent Phil Knapp navigates the patrol boat on the imaginary line separating the United States, right side, and Canada toward Lake Ontario, near Youngstown, N.Y.

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Into the predawn blackness sailed a Pakistani man, his pregnant wife and their 1- and 3-year-old children, another Pakistani, three adults from India and the Canadian man allegedly hired to deliver them to the United States, a half-mile across the river.

At 4:15 a.m. on June 5, the overburdened raft, its trolling motor working hard in the current and water sloshing at its passengers' feet, bobbed to the brushy banks of Grand Island, between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. The passengers climbed onto shore and crouched behind a bush to wait for their ride.

Border Patrol agents had watched it all and quickly had the group in custody.

"I have no allegiance to those people and I'll tell you everything," the raft's pilot, identified as Nathaniel Richardson, told agents, according to court documents.

While the nation's southern boundary is the gateway for most illegal immigrants, who die by the hundreds each year in the desert's blistering heat, agents up north are kept busy as well by no less risky attempts.

The gray raft, with its 660-pound capacity and small motor wired to a car battery, was sturdier than what others have used to sneak into the country via the waters above and below the famous falls. But "I would never be on the Niagara River on it. Maybe my pool," said Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Mike Przbyl.

On the 4,000-mile northern border, the enemy is not heat but often unforgiving cold. Here, it is also the scenic river's deceptive strength and its inviting bridges, with names such as Peace and Rainbow, that can be most unwelcoming.

In recent years, a Peruvian woman died after falling under the wheels of the freight train she had ridden across a bridge. A South African woman inadvertently smothered her baby while crouching in the back of a car to avoid detection at an inspection booth. A 36-year-old man from Zimbabwe died after becoming entangled in the undercarriage of a bus he had sneaked aboard.

There have been broken backs from falls, lost limbs under trains and carbon-monoxide poisonings from rides spent tucked up in the underside of trucks.

As of June 10, 5,285 people who crossed illegally had been arrested at the northern border since the beginning of the fiscal year Oct. 1, compared with 6,380 in the same period a year earlier, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
 
During the same period, there were 813,000 arrests at the half-as-long Southwestern border, compared with 622,000 a year earlier, the agency said.

While the government has traditionally concentrated most of its border resources to the Southwest, where 10,000 Border Patrol agents are assigned, the northern boundary, with its vast stretches of rugged wilderness, has gotten increasing attention since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The number of agents has tripled to 1,000, and there has been an influx of boats, aircraft and surveillance technology.

U.S. and Canadian authorities have stepped up information sharing, and the Integrated Border Enforcement Team comprising officers from more than a dozen agencies, including the Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, meets regularly. An 800 number that works on both sides of the border encourages residents to report suspicious activity.

Often, those trying to sneak into the country are not aware of the risks when they pay smugglers anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $60,000 for passage, said Ed Duda, deputy chief patrol agent at the Border Patrol in Buffalo.

A few years back, a group of Chinese men and women paid as much as $40,000 each for the chance to crawl a quarter of a mile in the dark across the upper, railroad deck of the two-tier Whirlpool Rapids Bridge 245 feet above the Niagara Gorge.

One man was rescued from the upper river in a pool ring rigged with two fins made of duct tape, presumably to help steer, Duda recalled.

Although the border sees its share of attempted drug smuggling — like the man videotaped balancing 50 pounds of hydroponic marijuana on his back while walking the supports of a bridge like a balance beam — most are simply seeking the American dream, authorities say.

"It's economic reasons more than anything else," said Rolando Velasquez, a Buffalo immigration attorney.

Duda said there is no common profile. Typically, more than 100 nationalities are represented among the arrests he sees each year. "There are 70-year-old grandmothers, months-old babies and everyone in between," he said.

Most of the group of nine arrested from the raft in June were quickly deported after pleading guilty to a minor offense, said Timothy Hoover, the federal public defender assigned to the case. The mother and her children were released temporarily for humanitarian reasons, but the father was sent back to Pakistan.

Richardson, the pilot of the raft, is still in U.S. custody after pleading not guilty to smuggling and harboring aliens, illegal entry and concealment of facts — charges that could bring him a maximum of 10 years in prison, if convicted.

The agents who spotted the raft were on routine foot patrol. Also in the agency's arsenal are powerful video cameras that allow agents to monitor the border on a bank of screens at headquarters, as well as patrol boats, a helicopter and other aircraft.

Lately, new gamma-ray machines that essentially X-ray trains crossing the border have been working overtime in the Buffalo sector, finding dozens of people huddled in box cars.

The smugglers, too, have taken advantage of technology, particularly cellphones and two-way radios that allow them to avoid agents and arrange rides before landing.

"As the current is bringing them across the river in their little raft, they're actually calling cabs," Duda said. "It's unbelievable."