WASHINGTON – Canada has agreed to supply the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with surveillance data collected from 22 radar feeds as American officials struggle to combat the use of low-flying aircraft to smuggle drugs across the Canada-U.S. border.
In testimony before a Senate panel, Customs and Border Protection commissioner Alan Bersin said the Canadian data will be sent to U.S. Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, California, starting in November.
The Canadian radar feeds will be used to detect "unlawful entry into the United States, unannounced entry," Bersin told reporters following a hearing of the Senate judiciary committee on border security.
"The ability of small aircraft to enter the United States undetected presents a multi-faceted threat."
U.S. senators have, for months, been pressing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to boost surveillance along the Canada-U.S. border to combat trafficking of marijuana, methamphetamines and other drugs in planes that frequently go undetected and land at small American airstrips.
In February, New York Senator Chuck Schumer and a group of other northern border lawmakers asked Napolitano to use military-grade radar technology track the low-flying aircraft.
"We have had a major problem on the northern border with the smuggling of drugs – methamphetamines and ecstasy, as well as marijuana," Schumer said at the hearing.
According to a recent Associated Press report, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seized more than two million doses of ecstasy along the Canada-U.S. border in 2009, up from just over 300,000 in 2004.
The Canadian radar will give U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents access to "more feeds than currently exist" and will be used to help fill the gaps in existing U.S. surveillance, Bersin said.
For decades, the U.S. and Canada have shared radar surveillance data through the North American Aerospace Defence Command – Norad.
The new arrangement is part of a deal negotiated between the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and NAV CANADA, the privately-operated company that runs Canada’s air traffic control system.
The Canada Border Services Agency was consulted throughout the negotiations, said Ron Singer, a spokesman for NAV CANADA.
"This is an additional agreement for sharing of surveillance data. It is for the purposes of border security," Singer said.
The provision of Canadian air traffic surveillance data comes as the U.S. and Canadian governments continue negotiations, launched in February by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for a perimeter security deal between the two countries.
At one point during the Tuesday hearing, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn questioned the need for additional security resources along the Canada-U.S. border, citing the far greater incidence of illegal entries along America’s southwestern border with Mexico.
The U.S. arrested and detained just 6,000 people along the Canada-U.S. border last year, compared with 445,000 along its frontier with Mexico.
But Bersin, echoing the findings of a Government Accountability Office report last year, said it is "commonly accepted that the more significant threat" from terrorism comes from people crossing into the U.S. from Canada.
"In fact, we have had more cases of people coming into Canada, for example, who would be on no-fly lists for a variety of reasons, who come to Canada, because they are entitled under Canadian law to do so," he said. "And they attempt to cross into the United States."
The goal of talks between the Obama administration and the Harper government is to share more intelligence and law enforcement resources to stop threats before they enter either country.
While stepping up joint surveillance at the border, Canada and the U.S. are nearing agreement on a pilot project intended to speed up trusted commercial traffic between the two countries, Bersin said.
"One of the things we are exploring with (Canada) is the notion of pre-inspection, the concept that we could separate out trusted shippers and trusted shipments even in advance of them coming to the port of entry," he said.
"That is a matter that we are working on and hope to present a pilot in the not-too-distant future."
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