July 6, 2018 — Border Patrol agents in northern New England apparently aren’t just ramping up their immigration enforcement on land. They’re also doing so on the water.
Canada is investigating at least two incidents in which two Canadian fishing vessels were reportedly stopped and questioned by U.S. Border Patrol agents in disputed waters off Maine, a spokesman for the country’s foreign affairs department confirmed Thursday.
The CBC reported Wednesday that the encounters occurred on June 24 and 25 in a so-called “grey zone” around Machias Seal Island and North Rock between the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the agents were just conducting “regular” patrol operations. However, Canadian officials are not happy.
“They’re being harassed,” Rick Doucet, New Brunswick’s fisheries minister, told the Toronto-based National Post. “Canadian fishermen are being harassed by U.S. border patrol. As far as I’m concerned, it needs to stop immediately.”
Doucet said Wednesday that the “heavily armed” Border Patrol agents were looking for undocumented immigrants, but that the fishermen were just “doing their job.”
“Absolutely overkill,” he said of the “disturbing” stops.
Laurence Cook, the chair of the Grand Manan Fisherman’s Association, wrote on Facebook at the time that the Border Patrol agents said they were “looking for illegal immigrants.”
“Typical American bullies,” Cook wrote in the June 25 post, asserting that the Canadian vessels were rightly fishing in Canadian water.