Homeland security says northern border at risk

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 2008

The U.S. is at risk from invasion through its northern border, a 4,000mile stretch of mostly unattended territory in 12 states, with the confirmed presence of a number of terrorist and extremist groups in Canada, states a report from the Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C. "The primary threat along the northern border is the potential for extremists and their conveyances to enter the U.S. undetected," the report maintains. "There is an undisputed presence in Canada of known terrorist affiliate and extremist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria:'

While the U.S. and Canada proudly have boasted that the dividing line between the two nations is the longest undefended international border in the post-9/11 world (there even is an International Peace Garden straddling the boundary on the edge of North Dakota), concerns over the movement of terrorists and their weaponry into the U.S. have increased exponentially--especially since it was revealed that, even before the attack on Sept. 11,2001, an Algerian-born operative for Osama bin Laden's network was caught crossing from Canada into Washington with a truck loaded with bomb-making materials, allegedly for use in a plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.

The report notes terrorists could blend into the Canadian population since 90% of Canada's residents live within 100 miles of the border but, on the U.S. side, much of the border is fronted by tens of thousands of square miles of sparsely populated forests in northern Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. "As such, the northern border's operating environment differs appreciably from the southwest border and requires a different law enforcement approach," the report stresses.

During 2007, more than 70,000,-000 people traveled across the border, and law enforcement agents arrested 4,000 of them and intercepted 20 tons of contraband, mostly drugs. The Department of Homeland Security had proposed that those crossing the border be required to present documents denoting citizenship and identity when entering the U.S. from Canada, but Congress then voted to delay that plan until 2009.