Immigration checks on ferry runs irk locals
Beefed-up security unwelcome along Wash. archipelago
ANACORTES, Wash. - Looking to snag illegal immigrants, drug runners, and terrorists, the US Border Patrol is staging surprise checks of travelers on domestic ferry runs in the San Juan Islands. What they are catching is heat from angry locals.
In 2008, Border Patrol agents began conducting the random checks and undercover surveillance at the Washington state ferry terminal in Anacortes. The agents stop disembarking passengers, inquire about citizenship, request IDs, and run vehicle and criminal background checks. A plainclothes officer patrols the small terminal.
The beefed-up homeland security has sparked scores of complaints from island residents, but authorities stand by the spot checks on domestic ferries, checks they say could expand to include a second route.
The measures are "not a stretch, not speculative," said Joseph Giuliano, deputy chief patrol agent in the Border Patrol's Blaine, Wash., sector. "Our intel tells us we have a limited problem there," he said of the area a few miles from Canada's Vancouver Island. "We don't like to go out on limbs with our limited resources."
Since February, fatigue-clad and armed border agents have put up checkpoints an average of 12 times a month. Their presence has been jarring for many in this community, known for its serene landscape and popularity as a vacation destination.
So far, agents have arrested 50 people - 49 of them Hispanics, mostly from Mexico - on suspicion of immigration violations. The Border Patrol turned them over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ferry identification checks also netted four US citizens on charges of personal use of marijuana.
The Border Patrol wants to secure a porous border and send a message - not chalk up mass arrests, Giuliano said.
Throughout history, the 170 islands, web of channels, and isolated coves have provided cover to criminals. Opium traffickers, moonshine peddlers, and marijuana sellers have avoided detection in the archipelago.
In December 1999, Ahmed Ressam, the "millennium bomber," was arrested in nearby Port Angeles, Wash. A customs agent stopped and questioned Ressam as he was getting off an international ferry from Canada. Ressam, who carried explosives in the trunk of his rental car, was convicted of plotting to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebration.
Still, many islanders see the domestic ferry runs differently. At packed local government meetings, some tossed around terms like "police state" and "racial profiling."
Most people "just don't like it," said Howard Rosenfeld, San Juan County Council chairman. "It promotes a culture of fear."
He worries that tourists, especially international ones, will take their business elsewhere.
"Anyone who acknowledges they are not an American gets taken aside," he said. "That creates a delay, and that's a disincentive for tourists to come and visit here."
About 15,500 people live in the island county. The population swells from spring through autumn, when 600,000 tourists visit. Ferries provide the vital link.
