GAO report warns of security threats from rural U.S.-Canada border

Most of the focus on U.S. border security has been focused on the southern border with Mexico, but a recent report from the Government Accountability Office suggests the greater threat may come from the north. This month, the GAO released a report "warning that the terrorist threat from Canada was higher than from Mexico because of the vast swaths of unprotected frontier," The Associated Press reports. Just 32 miles of the 4,000-mile border have an acceptable level of Border Patrol security, with agents available to make on-site arrests, the report said.  (Associated Press Photo, U.S. Border Patrol agents Glenn Pickering, front, and Janice Jones ride snowmobiles along the St. Lawrence River in Massena, N.Y.)

The mostly-rural Canadian border is "the United States' forgotten border, where federal agents and police play cat-and-mouse with smugglers and illegal immigrants along 4,000 miles of a mostly unmarked and unfortified frontier," AP writes. Senators from northern states have pushed the Obama administration to deploy military radar and more unmanned planes, and Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the head of the Senate's Homeland Security committee, recently suggested the government should examine requiring visas for Canadian visitors. "Our country is so focused on the southern border," Michigan Republican Rep. Candice Miller, who will chair a hearing about the report on Tuesday, told AP. "At the same time the northern border is essentially wide open."

"U.S. officials have said they are especially worried about extremists like Ahmed Ressam, the 'millenium bomber' who was caught in 1999 trying to bring an explosives-filled car into the United States on a ferry from British Columbia," AP writes. In addition to terrorist threats, the border also has become the target of drug smugglers. "In May, a Canadian kingpin confessed to running 2,000 pounds of marijuana a week through the forests of upstate New York. ... And in December, Canadian officials arrested 29 smugglers on charges of using boats to run tons of marijuana, Ecstasy and methamphetamine across the Great Lakes to Michigan and New York." (Read more)