Manitoba girl falls asleep, ends up in U.S.A.
02/06/2011 11:00:00 AM
by Nevil Hunt
U.S. border officials were caught napping last month when a train crossed from Manitoba to Minnesota. Tucked inside the freight train was a 16-year-old Manitoba girl who had simply fallen asleep inside one of the parked cars.
Attention all Canadian teens: free trips to New York City are now available at your local rail yard.
Last month a 16-year-old girl from Steinbach, Manitoba fell asleep in a stopped freight train and woke up in the United States.
When she arrived in Duluth, Minn., U.S. officials moved her to New York City to deal with a refugee resettlement agency. Then she was picked up by her parents and taken home.
The episode may leave some U.S. border officials red-faced, but it shouldn't be a surprise. Very little of what crosses north or south at the Canadian-U.S. border is actually inspected.
From the tiniest part-time border crossing in Maine to the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor and its $100 billion in annual trade, there are plenty of opportunities for something or someone to land on the other side without proper documentation or inspection.
The trunk of a vacationer's car rarely gets opened, and any one of them could contain a person. Now imagine how much goes unchecked when a line of trucks, a freight train or a container ship crosses the world's longest undefended border.
In the case of the Manitoba teen, the RCMP isn't saying if she was a runaway. No harm was done and she was unhurt, so that's good news.
The U.S. reaction to her arrival in Duluth is a bit confusing. Border patrol or immigration agents could surely have accepted her story and sent her home, but instead they sent the teen to New York City to deal with other officials.
That part of the story should be more embarrassing to U.S. Homeland Security than the fact the girl slipped over the border unchecked. A teenage girl can in no way be considered a security threat, so why delay her return to her parents? The first agent to speak with her should have called her mom and dad and driven her straight home.
This story made the news because it appears a rarity, but it's probably quite common, although most illegal border-crossers surely intend to end up on the other side and aren't just taking an international nap.
The downside of the publicity may be the fact that the tale will highlight the porousness of the border to knee-jerk politicians in the United States. Political points may be scored, yet the last thing we need as vacationing individuals or as a trading nations are more roadblocks between our two countries.
Can border security ever be perfect? Is it worth spending scads of money to try and prevent small-scale crossings without proper documentation?(http://news.sympatico.ca/oped/coffee-talk/manitoba_girl_falls_asleep_ends_up_in_usa/cacf6db0)
