Congress Probes Job Action Against Border Patrol Agents

For reference, here's the Detroit Free Press story discussed in the above article.

U.S.-CANADIAN LINE: Concern escalates amid lax security
September 19, 2001
BY TAMARA AUDI AND DAVID ZEMAN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
On the night of June 4, U.S. Border Patrol agents in Detroit captured a Pakistani man trying to sneak into the U.S. aboard a freight train from Canada. They questioned him, and, with nowhere to detain him, sent him back to Canada.
Monday, the arresting agent saw a name that matched the Pakistani's on a list of 200 people wanted for questioning in connection with last week's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"When I saw that name, I almost got sick," said Mark Hall.
Hall said he would have been able to question the man and his associates more thoroughly if his office had facilities to detain suspects.
Detroit Police said late Tuesday that investigators recently discovered the man was not the same one on the list. An Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesperson would not confirm the man's status.
Still, the incident, say Hall and another veteran agent, is an example of a border with an alarming lack of security. The border, because of Canada's liberal entry and immigration policies, is under renewed scrutiny amid reports that at least two of the suspected hijackers involved in last week's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reportedly crossed the border into Maine. Even since last week's attacks, patrol stations along Michigan's border with Canada were left unstaffed for stretches of time.
A spokesman for the INS, which includes the Border Patrol, said he could not comment on activities on the border.
"All I can say is that we're at the highest level of alert and we are doing our job," said Mike Gilhooly, an INS spokesman.
But agents in Michigan say that at a time when it is more important than ever to guard the Canadian border from terrorists threats, they are left to protect 804 miles of waterway and shoreline wilderness with one working boat, 28 field agents, and a remote surveillance camera that has been out of service for six months.
"The stuff is falling apart. We're putting it together with duct tape," said Robert Lindemann, another senior patrol agent. Lindemann and Hall testified during a 1999 U.S. Congressional hearing on lack of security along the Canadian border. Some improvements were made after that, they said. Four patrol boats have been ordered and should be in Michigan in the next few months, they said.
But most of the money ran out, and their call for 100 more agents has gone unanswered. The last year has "gone back to business as usual. The American people are not being given what they deserve. It's dangerous, and it's scary," said Hall, a union official.
The Border Patrol gets some help from other law enforcement agencies with boats on the Great Lakes and its connecting waters, like the Detroit and St. Clair rivers and Lake St. Clair.
The U.S. and Canada share the world's longest undefended border.
Frequent travelers across the bridge and tunnel between Detroit and Windsor might think all crossings are comfortably monitored.
In truth, vast expanses of the 4,000-mile Canadian border -- stretching from Washington to Maine -- are unpatrolled forests, prairies, lakes and mountains. Official checkpoints can be 40 miles apart, with sensors monitoring the roads between them. In some outposts, inspectors leave their positions at night, placing traffic cones behind to discourage crossings until the next morning.
So, too, in Michigan. Recreational boaters routinely cross the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair. In the Upper Peninsula, snowmobilers cross the ice into Canada from Drummond Island. Such crossings get little notice from authorities.
For decades, that system worked.
Then, in the 1980s, Canadian security officials noticed an increase in suspected terrorists among immigrants and political refugees, who were routinely released from detention while their cases were processed. A 1998 government report concluded at least 50 terrorist organizations operated in Canada, including Hizballah, Hamas, Iranian and Algerian groups.
But as the northern threat grew, U.S. immigration officials were diverting inspectors and resources to stanch illegal immigration from Mexico, said Peter Andreas, a professor of political science at Brown University and author of "Border Games."
So while 8,000 armed Border Patrol agents monitored Mexico, 324 agents were left for the Canadian border.
The northern threat did not gain urgency until the Dec. 14, 1999, arrest of Ahmed Ressam in rural Washington. Ressam, an Algerian who entered Canada on a false passport, carried a carload of bomb-making material. His reported target: Los Angeles International Airport.
Ever since, U.S. officials have pressured Canada to tighten its liberal immigration, visa and refugee policies and broaden the exchange of counterterrorism intelligence.
David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said last week's attack should jar Canadian officials from any lingering complacency.
But in recent days, agents along Michigan's Canadian border continue to be called away from their posts to process illegal Mexican immigrants caught at Detroit Metro Airport.
"They're ordering us off our terrorist watch to arrest women and children," Hall said.
When agents do catch illegal immigrants, there is nowhere to put them. U.S. Border Patrol here has no detention centers of its own, and pays Wayne County Jail $70 a day for each prisoner if the budget allows.
"The northern border," Hall said, "has been basically abandoned by the government."

What were the serious inadequacies ?

"Based on this situation, it appears that some managers at the INS and Border Patrol are more worried about suppressing embarrassing information than enforcing immigration laws and protecting the nation's security," he concluded.

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Reminds me of a case like this I read sometime ago. Some state (or county or whatever) had made voter registration a joke. One guy set out to prove this by registaring his dog...in a snap and with zero trouble. He then brought this to the attention to the powers-that-be, and the media. As a result, instead of being grateful to him for proving a point, they threw the book at him. The poor guy even ended up in the pokey for a while.

Naw, I don't think it's an "American thing". I think it's more of worldwide "Burocratic thing".

Thanks for providing the link/article...appreciate it.

The northern border isn't the only border that has been abandoned by the government. Ditto the southern border.

Border enforcement is a sticky subject to the Bush administration, and they don't want any criticism. Bush should have closed both borders on September 12.

The Whistle Blower Protection Law is a joke and not a funny one at that. Isn't it reasonable to have a law that makes the bosses/bureaucrats pay personally (loss of job, loss of benefits, fines and out of pocket responsibility to employee legal expenses and loss of wage or hard ships) for this kind of retalitory action against an employee(s). Where the hell is the accountability for the bureaucrats and politicians these days?

Where the hell is the accountability for the bureaucrats and politicians these days?

When has there ever been accountability for bureaucrats and politicans?

FYI...Full Story

Congress Probes Job Action Against Border Patrol Agents
Source ;CNSNews.com; Published: April 1, 2002;
Author: Jeff Johnson1st Write thru.

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - A Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration is questioning the Immigration and Naturalization Service's decision to discipline two Border Patrol agents for publicly pointing out weaknesses in security along the U.S. border with Canada.

"As a longtime advocate for whistleblowers, I am shocked and angry about the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Border Patrol's retaliation against Border Patrol agents Mark Hall and Robert Lindemann," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a letter to INS Commissioner James Ziglar Friday.

Grassley is also the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs.

"Based on this situation, it appears that some managers at the INS and Border Patrol are more worried about suppressing embarrassing information than enforcing immigration laws and protecting the nation's security," he concluded.

In a September 19, 2001, article in the Detroit Free Press, Hall and Lindemann detailed serious inadequacies in their agency's efforts to stop terrorists from entering the U.S. from Canada.

"The northern border," Hall told the newspaper, "has been basically abandoned by the government."

The two testified to Congress in an open hearing in Nov. 2001, sharing much of the same information contained in the press reports. Grassley called the disclosures by Hall, who serves as president of the local Border Patrol agents' union, and Lindemann, the group's vice president, "a valuable service to the public."

Initial threats by INS and Border Patrol supervisors to fire Hall and Lindemann were "especially galling," said Grassley, because that punishment would have been "far more severe" than measures taken against higher-level INS officials involved in the agency's two most recent embarrassing incidents.

He cited the example of four officials at INS headquarters who were "merely reassigned" after a Florida flight school received confirmation of student visa approvals for two September 11 hijackers six months after their deaths.

The senator also referred to a Norfolk, Va., INS official who allowed four Pakistani nationals into the U.S. without proper documentation. That official also was only reassigned to another office as "punishment."

"The personnel actions in both these cases were widely viewed as slaps on the wrist," Grassley observed.

Since their public disclosures, Hall and Lindemann have been prohibited from working together and have been assigned to different shifts, where they earn less pay, according to Grassley. The Iowa Republican say the Border Patrol delayed a plan to suspend them for 90 days without pay and demote them for one year, pending the outcome of an investigation.

"It is my understanding that the OSC [Office of Special Counsel] has reasonable grounds to believe that Border Patrol officials retaliated against the two agents for making disclosures, which are protected by the Whistleblower Protection Act and the First Amendment of the Constitution," Grassley noted in his letter.

The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General came to a similar conclusion, which it reported to Ziglar in a March 4 memorandum.

"We seriously question the decision to propose discipline against Hall and Lindemann and believe it would not be upheld," the memo stated.

"We believe the INS's proposal was unsound and that the INS should reevaluate whether it has a basis to go forward with discipline against the two agents," the OIG recommended.

Grassley says punitive actions such as those proposed by the INS are exactly why he authored the 1989 "Whistleblower Protection Act." The law prohibits government supervisors from taking or threatening to take personnel actions against employees who disclose:

* a violation of any law, rule, or regulation;
*gross mismanagement;
*a gross waste of funds;
*an abuse of authority; or
*a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.

The protection does not apply to disclosures that are prohibited by law or, in cases of national security matters, by executive order.

A request for comment from the INS received no response prior to publication of this story. However INS spokesman Russ Bergeron told the Washington Times Monday that the agency does not take disciplinary action against employees who speak to the media in accordance with established procedures.

"Employees have a responsibility to ensure that the safety of fellow officers and private citizens, as well as the service's national security efforts, are not compromised by comments made to the media," he told the newspaper.

Grassley believes that none of those exclusions apply to Hall's and Lindemann's disclosures.

"The INS' actions in this case are exactly the opposite of what should be done," Grassley wrote Ziglar, adding that INS needs to encourage whistleblowers to "expose security problems that have been ignored by the bureaucrats."

Bergeron said he could not specifically discuss the case involving Hall and Lindemann because of the ongoing investigation.

Grassley's letter seeks a response from the INS Commissioner within ten days specifically requesting that Ziglar:

*Promise that no retaliation will be taken against Hall and Lindemann;
*Change INS procedures for employee contacts with the media; and
*Discipline "the only individuals who should be punished in this matter - the managers who sought to retaliate against Hall and Lindemann."

E-mail a news tip to Jeff Johnson.

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And we wonder why more people don't come forward and blow the whistle. If it was not for 9/11, Congress would let the INS fire these guys

I agree. Somtimes it seems like Bush is a secret Mexican agent or somthing. He puts Mexico's interests ahead of America's