They must have wanted to get here badly.
In the pre-dawn hours of June 5, a family from Pakistan and three women from India climbed into an inflatable raft best suited to floating in a tranquil pond to finish their journey to America with a dash across the raging Niagara.
Counting the craft's pilot, whom they'd never met before, nine people boarded the raft in Niagara Falls, Ont. With a puttering motor dragging the overloaded vessel -- carrying at least twice the 660 pounds for which it was rated -- across the current of the upper Niagara River, with no oars, anchor or even lifejackets to protect them if it failed, they made their way to Grand Island. Where the United States Border Patrol was waiting.
Smuggling certainly isn't what it used to be in Niagara Falls. The area's role as one of the busiest crossings for bootleggers during Prohibition remains part of regional lore. The narrow channel of the lower river helped fuel the empire of Don Stefano Magaddino, who reigned for more than half a century.
Nobody's rowing cases of whiskey across the Niagara anymore, but humans have proven a steadily lucrative cargo since before Don Stefano even arrived in America.
Talk to the right old-timers, and you'll hear tales that veer between comical and horrific. There was a cable car, launched from Niagara Falls, Ont., that swung out over the river to offer tourists a perspective impossible to achieve on land. Its path also created an optical illusion from the launch point that might make a rider think he was landing on the American side, if he wasn't paying attention.
The story goes that smugglers would charge illegal aliens $100, give them a ticket for the cable car, and carefully tell them to get on the car, don't make eye contact with anyone during the ride, get off when it stopped and quickly walk away, following meticulous directions to a restaurant or house where another smuggler was allegedly waiting to deliver them to their final destination -- usually New York City. The sucker would follow the directions, only to find that no one was waiting for him, that he had never actually left Canada and that both his money and the smuggler were long gone.
Not everyone was even that lucky, though. Smugglers, in a more sinister anecdote, insisted that their passengers climb into canvas bags for the passage across the Niagara, ostensibly to give the smuggler a chance to fool the authorities into thinking they were just out for a late-night boat ride if they were discovered. In actuality, the story goes, at the first sign of a watchman's light, having the cargo bagged made it much easier to pitch into the frigid current. After all, the passenger had pre-paid for the trip, so who cared if he actually got there?
The smugglers who put all those men, women and children on the raft at about 4 a.m. on June 5 had little more regard for human life. According to Nathanael J. Richardson, the boat's pilot, he was hired for the potentially disastrous job earlier that evening at a party by a man he knew only as "Chris."
The raft crossed less than a mile from the buoys past which boating is illegal. Had the motor failed, the craft would have drifted rather quickly back toward the Horseshoe Falls. With no oars to fight the current, anchor to hold the raft in place or lifejackets to help them stay afloat in the rapidly moving river, the passengers -- barring a full-fledged miracle -- would have been swept to their deaths.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Border Patrol came under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. Where there had been only 35 agents to keep an eye on more than 450 miles of waterways between Erie, Pa., and Watertown, now there are more than 130. Where there had been only creaky, antiquated whaling boats able to patrol only under the best of conditions, now there are powerful 24-foot cruisers on the Niagara around the clock every day. Where once the Border Patrol had minded its business and the U.S. Coast Guard taken care of its own, the two organizations now coordinate their efforts to maximize surveillance of the entire border.
Getting across the river today would require a technical failure, or someone falling soundly asleep. There are the regular rounds made by boat, as well as foot patrols like the one that snagged Richardson's foray. Video cameras -- including one on Wrobel Towers -- keep a constant watch on the railroad bridges in Buffalo and Niagara Falls, as well as the entire lower river. The highest-tech device employed by the Border Patrol, a gamma-ray machine that can detect any movement on trains coming into the country, makes such passage virtually impossible.
Of course, that doesn't mean plenty of people aren't still trying to get across. As of last week, the Border Patrol had caught 65 people trying to enter the country illegally -- 43 stowed on trains and 22 on boats or rafts, according to Stuart Woodside, assistant chief of the Buffalo sector.
Those stories also run the gamut from goofy to grim:
For the most part, though, most of the people trying to get in fit the profile of the people in that overloaded raft -- members of the huddled masses, yearning to be free.
"Anyone that we apprehend, we run all kinds of records checks to make sure there's no wants or warrants," Woodside said. "Nowadays, no one can take any chances. We have to be real vigilant."
After protecting against terrorism, breaking up the smuggling rings that can fetch $40,000 for the trip from India, Asia or South America to the shores of Western New York is the Border Patrol's next priority. With Richardson's cooperation, authorities hope to make more arrests in the case, Woodside said.
This case was unusual in that the smugglers provided a driver -- even one pulled out of a party and tempted into risking his life for $300 in U.S. funds. In most cases, the smugglers don't even show that much regard for human life.
"They say, 'Here's the raft, here's the electric motor, go that way and may God go with you,'" Woodside said. "They're placing people's lives in jeopardy here."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 15 2004 |