PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County Democrats on Wednesday urged federal Border Patrol agents to avoid creating fear and resentment.
Libby Palmer, addressing U.S. Border Patrol agents at a gathering at the Pope Marine Building downtown, talked of living in the “Red scare” in the 1950s and SSRq60s.
“Many of us remember that era, when everybody was a communist living under everything around us,” said Libby Palmer, addressing U.S. Border Patrol agents at a gathering at the Pope Marine Building downtown.
“That fear was spread in order to perpetuate aspects of the policy at the time and it was intense.”
Palmer was one of about 50 who attended the forum hosted by the Jefferson County Democrats and attended by Border Patrol agents Cmdr. Todd McCool, Deputy Cmdr. Jason Carroll, and Chris Dyer, public affairs officer.
Port Townsend resident Dave Woodruff shared similar sentiments.
“If you are here to protect us from foreign terrorists, that’s one thing, but if you are just trying to perpetuate your agency that’s another,” Woodruff said.
“Don’t try to scare us and tell us about the bogeymen . . . tell us how you are here and how you are interdicting terrorists.”
Checkpoints
Carroll said that, of the five checkpoints the Border Patrol has conducted on the North Olympic Peninsula, including one on state Highway 104 in Jefferson County near Hood Canal Bridge and another on U.S. Highway 101 at Discovery Bay, 15 immigration-related arrests were made, 10 of which were turned over to other agencies because of suspected criminal backgrounds.
He said checkpoints are approved directly from headquarters in Washington, D.C., and are generally posted at the confluence of two roads leading away from the border, such as U.S. 101 and state Highways 20, and state Highway 104 near the floating bridge.
Questioned by Jefferson County Democrats Chairman Matt Sircely, who moderated the forum, Carroll said he would prefer that agents worked off the Peninsula’s mainland, in the surrounding waterways, even on the other side of the border, so as not to upset residents.
‘Receptive agency’
“We are a receptive agency that looks at the concerns of our community,” he said.
Carroll said he had a wife and children and hoped to remain on the Peninsula for the rest of his life.
“Those are the kinds of people that the Border Patrol is trying to bring to this area,” he said.
Two audience members objected to the agents showing up carrying sidearms, but Dyer explained it was just a part of the uniform, like a shirt.
He added that they were no different than police officers showing up at a function carrying weapons.
“This is our uniform,” he said.
Chimacum resident John Cantlon asked why the Border Patrol appeared to be applying the southern border strategy to the northern border, by adding agents.
“I don’t have a problem with the Border Patrol,” Cantlon said. “But to take the southern strategy at the southern border and move it up here is completely mind boggling.”
Carroll said the extent of the Border Patrol’s staffing now amounts to 19 agents on actual patrol “working the border.”
The number of agents for the entire Peninsula’s shoreline border was “a drop in the bucket, but that helps with the deterring effect,” he said with a smile.
“We analyze our strategy,” Carroll said. “The threat up here is terrorists. Canada is an easy country to get asylum.”
Jane Whicher, a Port Townsend attorney representing the American Civil Liberties Union, passed out new ACLU pocket cards that inform residents of their rights if they are contacted by a Border Patrol agent.
Dyer passed out Border Patrol information brochures as well.
The cards, available at Ancestral Spirits Gallery, 701 Water St., are part of a pilot program that will include informational signs inside Jefferson Transit buses.
The signs, which will appear about a week, will inform bus riders about their civil rights with U.S. Border Patrol agents and are a result of Jefferson Transit officials wanting to make their buses “safe havens” for riders.
Border Patrol officials have said they were interested in boarding buses that travel across county lines, such as those running between Sequim and Port Townsend, but have not boarded public transit buses since checkpoints and other Border Patrol efforts to protect the U.S. border have heightened since late last year.
Dyer cited United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, a Supreme Court case, as backing up the constitutionality of asking people about their citizenship status.
The agents also said that an addition of 125 agents proposed for the Border Patrol’s Blaine Sector, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula, does not necessarily mean more agents on the Peninsula.
McCool said that number was likely to be representative of the entire Blaine Sector, which extends from Alaska to the California-Oregon border.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
