Canada border is U.S. drug war's second front

The world's longest undefended border: It's an increasingly imprecise term for the U.S. - Canada border, as authorities on both sides ratchet up efforts to curb bustling traffic in illegal drugs and guns.

The U.S. Border Partrol has tripled the number of agents along the 5,500-mile stretch in recent years, with hundreds more soon to be deployed.

Unmanned U.S. surveillance aircraft are being tested for use over the (frontier) border, and video surveillance towers are going up around Buffalo and Detroit. Multi-agency, binational law enforcement teams operate in 15 regions from coast to coast.

The U.S. - Mexico border draws far more attention - and more American resources, as Mexican drug cartels fuel killings and corruption with massive trafficking operations.

Thousands of Mexican troops battle the cartels in a conflict that has killed over 11,000 people since 2008. By comparison, the scale of drug violence and trafficking in Canada is minuscule.

The northern border, mostly out of the spotlight, presents its own challenges though. It's hard to monitor due to its enormous length and rough geography, and used by a diverse array of traffickers ranging from outlaw motorcycle gangs to Asian-run drug rings.

"It's a long border, mostly very remote, very wooded, very sparsely populated," says James Burns, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent in charge of upstate New York. "It's easy to go from one side to the other without detection."

Canada supplies large quantities of marijuana to American users, including hundreds of thousands of pounds a year of lucrative, hogh-potency "B.C. Bud" from British Columbia.

Canada also has developed rapidly into a leading supplier of ecstacy - often laced with highly addictive methamphetamine - both for U.S. and overseas markets, as crime gangs operate factory-style superlabs.

The contraband arrives by helicopter, boat and float plane, in cattle trucks, hikers' backpacks and by snowmobile.

One favored smuggling passageway is the St. Regis/Akwesasane Mohawk Indian reservation that straddles the St. Lawrence River along the New York - Canada border where tribal sovereignty limits access by Canadian and U.S. authorities.

Just this month, federal and state authorities in Plattsburgh, New York, on the western shore of Lake Champlain, announced the dismantling of a purported billion-dollar marijuana smuggling ring that used Mohawk land as a transit route into the U.S.

"Operation Iron Curtain" resulted in charges against more than 45 people from Quebec to Florida. Over the past four years, the ring smuggled about $250 million worth of high-grade, hydroponic marijuana into the U.S. annually, according to authorities.

Even excluding the remote 1,500-mile border with Alaska, the U.S. - Canada frontier coveres 4,000 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific, making it twice as long as the U.S. - Mexico border.

Yet, the U.S. Border Patrol has 1,500 agents deployed along the Canadian border, compared with 16,900 along the Mexican border.

The northern contingent is up from less than 500 agents in 2002 and will expand to more than 2,200 over the next year, according to the Border Patrol.

Marijuana from Canada accounts for less than 3 percent of the pot seized near U.S. borders, with the bulk coming from Mexico. But the DEA fears more will be coming from the north as marijuana-growing operations expand in eastern Canada.

Canada border is drug war's second front - Washington Times
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