HOULTON, Maine — Stressing the importance of maintaining strong border relations, Rep. Bruce Poliquin toured Aroostook County Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016 with members of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Poliquin met with Mark Morgan, chief of the United States Border Patrol, for a helicopter tour of Aroostook County to get a first-hand look at northern Maine’s border with Canada.
Following the tour, Poliquin along with Daniel Hiebert, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol chief agent for the Houlton Sector, held a town hall session at the Shiretown Motor Inn for a group of about 30 residents to discuss his time in Maine.
“We don’t have a country unless we have secure borders,” Poliquin said. “I believe that the most important job of any member of Congress is to support and defend the Constitution, which in part means supporting and protecting our families.”
There are 20 sectors in the country that protect the United States border. The Houlton sector is responsible for the entire state of Maine, representing 600 miles of border. All of the other border sectors are responsible for multiple states, but because of the vast geography of Maine, one sector is needed for the whole state. The Houlton sector maintains stations in Calais, Fort Fairfield, Houlton, Jackman, Rangeley and Van Buren.
Another unique aspect of the CBP is that all of its members are sworn as “peace officers” giving them arrest authority in the state. Maine is one of the few locations in the country where agents have this authority, Hiebert said.
As chief patrol agent, Hiebert said one of his main duties is to continually look at the “threat picture facing the border environment” and making adjustments to the deployments as needed.
Poliquin said one of the things he learned from his tour, was just how difficult it was to patrol the northern border.
“The geography is not flat, so you can’t use drones or other types of technology to patrol,” Poliquin said. “Secondly, it is quite porous. There are all kinds of ways that people can come across the border undetected.”
Another issue Poliquin said he was concerned about was the new administration in Canada that has been very welcoming to Middle Eastern refugees. So far, 28,000 Syrian refugees have settled in Canada.
“We know by public statements made by terrorist organizations around the world, that those groups are looking to imbed individuals who might want to cause our country harm into those refugee populations,” Poliquin said. “We have a tremendous relationship with Canada, but it is also a dangerous world and we have a very large unprotected border with Canada.”
Some residents in the audience also expressed concerns about Syrian refugees settling in parts of Western New Brunswick, and asked Hiebert what if anything his office was doing differently to patrol the area or screen those coming into the state.
“The resettlement of 28,000 Syrian refugees in and of itself is not a problem,” Hiebert said. “The problem that lies there is that we do not know very much about them. For all we know, nothing will happen, but we also know that some extremist organizations have vowed to exploit those refugees. That’s a cause for concern.”
Hiebert said his agency was working to “advance a strategy” that has been in development since 2012 that includes basing and resourcing the operation based on threats and the risk to national security that those threats may pose to the United States.
“One of the things that the Border Patrol has traditionally been subject to is we have to justify [funding] based on the apprehensions and seizures that we make,” Hiebert said. “We are trying to get away from that because it does not tell the whole story. The apprehension of thousands of illegal aliens on the southern border and tons of narcotics … that’s a threat. But we also have to look at the potential threats on the northern border.”
He added there might be an increased presence of agents in the area at some point in the future, but nothing is in the immediate plans to increase staff.
Hiebert said all law enforcement is reactive by nature, but he was trying to make his office more proactive, particularly when it comes to gathering intelligence on national security measures.
Terry Beals of Houlton, who owns Beals Aircraft at the Houlton International Airport near the border of Woodstock, New Brunswick, asked Hiebert about the status of the USCBP helicopter that is currently based at the Houlton airport.
“I have been involved in the aviation community since I was 15 years old,” Beals said. “My main concern is the helicopter asset we have here. Where do you stand on leaving the helicopter here [in Houlton] versus moving it to several different places, like Bangor?”
Hiebert said he recognizes the need for the helicopter in patrolling the border, and acknowledged that Houlton would seem like the logical location for that aircraft to be based. But he also stressed that the aircraft was responsible for servicing the entire state, not just the northern border.
“We don’t technically own the helicopter,” Hiebert said. “That falls under the Air and Marine Operations Office. Their primary purpose is to support Border Patrol and its operations. I don’t have the say-so as to where it goes. I actually don’t have a whole lot of influence that we even have a helicopter to utilize at this time.”
Hiebert added he has received assurances that before any decision is made to relocate the helicopter, a thorough threat-assessment study will be done to determine the best location for it.
