HAVRE - Joe Hazelton parks his truck on the cusp of Kennedy Coulee and faces the wind blowing in from Canada. Raising his binoculars to his eyes, he scans the landscape that marks the 49th parallel, reading the morning shadows and the slowly shifting river in the ravine below.
U.S. Border Patrol agents like Hazelton spend a good chunk of their day alone, crossing the open terrain in search of the unusual. Few know the roads that jump the open border like the men and women who patrol this remote sector on Montana's northern tier.
The 49th parallel is little more than a broken fence separating two nations. A concrete obelisk clings to the coulee's south wall, noting the convention of 1818 when the boundary between British North America and the United States was established.
As far as the eye can see, it's open prairie, badlands and rolling hills with plenty of places to hide. The Sweetgrass Hills, with their pine forests and shaded gullies, provide good cover. The Milk River snakes lazily from Canada into Montana, cutting a deep chasm in the prairie. Many of the farms on the border have been abandoned, the houses shuttered and barns sealed, the perfect setting for a horror film, or better yet, a hideout.
It's empty to be sure. Only a handful of farmers remain on the northern tier, where they eke out a rugged living, not unlike the weeds growing from the rarely traveled roads. Yet, many who have attempted to cross into Montana on foot, illegally or not, have been spotted by area residents.
“We do a lot of liaison with the ranchers,'' Hazelton said. “Because of the vastness of the area, the farmers help us out a lot, serving as our eyes and ears.''
Plenty of stories recount incidents where a farmer has reported suspicious activity. Over breakfast at the Lunch Box Café in downtown Havre, Stuart Mackintosh, an area farmer, recalled two Jamaicans dressed in shorts and T-shirts trying to cross into Montana near White Horse in September.
While the men successfully made it into the United States on foot, the fall weather came as a surprise and stopped them dead in their tracks. Too cold to go on, the men surrendered to a Hi-Line resident, who gave them refuge in a shed until the authorities took them into custody.
While most illegal activity is caught at the larger checkpoints like Sweetgrass, a few people have been known to try an illegal crossing on foot, traversing up to 70 miles of open, unpopulated country. Other than their own limitations, there's little to stop them from reaching U.S. Highway 2, an east-west thoroughfare that spans the nation.
“If you plan on walking into the U.S., you've got a long ways to go,'' said agent John Shew, standing outside the Whitlash Port of Entry, about 40 miles north of Chester. “Nine months of the year, it's brutally cold up here. And when someone does go cross-country, it's not long before they're noticed.''
The landscape here is just as wide and unforgiving as the southern desert. Shew, like Hazelton, came north after a tour on the southern border, where illegal crossings were a daily occurrence.
But up here the days can pass quietly, the wind serving as an agent's only companion. Even so, Shew has stories to tell, including that of a man seen walking down the road looking hot and tired. A rancher reported him to authorities.
“We didn't know who he was or what he was doing,'' Shew said. “We came looking for him and sure enough, there he was, just walking down the road.''
Where Shew says the Montana border's terrain and weather are a natural deterrent, Hill County Sheriff Greg Szudera said it may also serve as a national weakness. The entire Montana border stretches 545 miles from North Dakota to Idaho. In some ways, Szudera said, it's too big and open to thoroughly patrol.
Seated in his Havre office, Szudera admitted that if he didn't have the Border Patrol guarding his back door, he'd need five more deputies to fill the void. It's one of the benefits of having the Border Patrol based across town, where agents help patrol the 2,897 square miles that comprise Hill County.
The county itself shares roughly 90 miles of border with Canada, including the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Riddled with snakes and cactus, desert heat and arctic cold, the terrain and conditions are unique to the northern plains.
But as the locals say, there isn't a Canadian immigration problem up north. That lack of activity may create an artificial sense of security, which has Szudera concerned.
“Terrorists - their goal is to murder people,'' he said. “If they can murder one or 30 or 3,000, they're going to do it. If we get too relaxed and don't act professional, we could be in serious trouble.''
Szudera rocks behind his desk when talking about the northern border. While illegal crossings are more common down south, he admits, the flow of drugs and the threat of terrorism remain an equal concern up north.
In fact, many of the agents recite the Border Patrol's mission when pressed for details about their job. Their answers are somewhat rehearsed in that their primary goal is to stop terrorists and weapons of mass destruction from entering the country.
The isolation and hard work that goes with living on the northern tier allows few locals time to consider the threat of terrorism. What's more, the national media and Washington politicians focus largely on issues pertaining to the southern border, leaving the northern border something of an unmentioned mystery.
“The mind-set of the local citizenry and some law enforcement is that terrorism won't happen here,'' Szudera said. “I do have concerns, and those are the terrorism issues we have in our country. We know terrorism incidents do happen. It could happen in rural Montana.''
Area farmer Vern Pimley can nearly throw a stone across the Canadian border without leaving the seat of his tractor. Still, he shrugs at the very mention of border security and the terrorist threat.
A weathered man who's lived a life of labor, Pimley has been here for almost 60 years, working this windswept plot of land 30 miles north of Joplin. After some prodding, he recalled his early years, back when he saw Border Patrol agents from time to time - men riding horseback through open country, spending their nights in Pimley's one-room schoolhouse.
Most locals say that before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seeing a Border Patrol agent was a rarity. Now, farmers like Pimley see the agents pass in their big white trucks almost daily as they race up and down the empty roads. Ninety-two agents are assigned to the Havre sector of the border.
“I like the idea of the Border Patrol being here and the security they provide,'' said Havre resident Larry Martinson. “I saw them drive by at 10:30 last night.''
“We need security,'' added farmer Mackintosh. “We don't need the Taliban here. And we don't need all the dope.''
Brenna Neinast, the chief agent with the Havre sector, said the Border Patrol began focusing solely on its mission after President Bush established the Department of Homeland Security. The move also doubled the number of agents working the Havre sector.
All in all, Neinast said, the changes have added another line of defense to the nation's security. It has also added another deterrent to anyone looking to cross illegally into the United States by way of Montana, or so the thinking goes. In this way, the nation's security, in part, relies upon deterrence.
“September 11 changed the way we do business,'' said Neinast. “It changed the focus of our agency. We were given a clearer mission for the first time in a long time.''
On the Net
For a multimedia report on Montana's northern border, go online to: http://www.helenair.com/series/bigskyborder/
Drug smuggling not top border priority
By EVE BYRON of the Helena Independent Record
HELENA - Most of the drugs confiscated by federal agents in Montana come from people crossing the border at legal ports of entry, which begs the question: Do most smugglers try to sneak their wares into the United States from Canada through these legal crossings, or are the agents just not finding those who are crossing illegally?
The answer seems to be a little of both, according to Mike Milne, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
He notes that the vast majority of people coming into the United States do so at legal border crossings, which could be part of the reason for the larger number of drugs confiscated there.
“For instance, on a typical day nationally, 1.1 million people are processed through our points of entry,” Milne said, adding that the figure includes both northern and southern borders. “Those who are coming here between the legal crossings are A) entering the U.S. illegally, so they already have a violation there or B) are entering illegally because they're up to no good in other ways. They're smuggling narcotics, currency or other items.
“Are we perfect and catching everything? The answer is no. ... Are the borders impenetrable? No. But we're making them more secure and have more resources available now.”
Those realities are reflected in statistics compiled for the Havre sector, which covers 454 miles of the Montana-Canadian border, according to Ramon Rivera with the border patrol's office in Washington, D.C.
At legal ports of entry in the Havre sector during fiscal year 2007, agents confiscated marijuana 20 times, methamphetamine four times, cocaine six times, and psilocybin mushrooms, poppies and Oxycontin once each.
By comparison, during the same time frame at nonlegal points of entry, like trails or rural roads, the agents were involved in only four incidents involving marijuana, and one each of mushrooms and heroin. Only one of those incidents amounted to a quantity large enough - almost 19 pounds - to be considered something other than personal use.
Havre sector spokesperson Alex Harrington said it's not just that more people go through the legal entry points, it's also that searching for drug smugglers isn't the border patrol's No. 1 objective.
“Our main mission is to look for illegal aliens and terrorists, and if the people we stop do have something on them, that's good for our agents, but it's not the main reason we stop people,” Harrington said.
Confiscating small quantities of street drugs seems to be typical for what's also happening at the legal border crossings in Montana, where agents usually make one or two large drug busts each year.
Milne expects more smugglers will try to cross the border into Montana in the future, since agents have been working the Washington-Vancouver border hard in the past decade. These drug dealers typically are well-financed, dedicated and resourceful, which makes them a “formidable foe” for law enforcement, he said.
Since 2003, the office of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has almost tripled the size of the force on the 4,000-mile Canadian border, from 300 to 928. Overall, that that means each person is responsible for 4.3 miles.
The Havre sector, which stretches from the eastern Montana border to the Continental Divide, has 92 agents, or an average of about five miles per agent. Havre generally ranks in the middle of the agent-per-mile ratio of the eight sectors along the northern border.
With all this emphasis on catching terrorists or weapons of mass destruction, is it a success or failure of the Havre sector that it's made only one arrest of an individual wanted for questioning in connection with possible terrorist activities?
“They're not pounding on our door, but we are here just in case,” Harrington said. “It only takes one terrorist, one individual with a grudge against the United States, to come across with something on them.
“We want to make sure another 9/11 doesn't happen.”
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