WASHINGTON ﾗ The Department of Homeland Security calls the procedure its last line of defense. But critics in Florida’s boating community wonder whom exactly it’s stopping.
Bring up the new set of rules for those sailing back from foreign locales such as the Bahamas, and it won’t take long for Naples boater Lee Lyons to start picking them apart.
There’s the logistical headache of finding ground transportation to make a 90-minute round trip to a customs and immigration office. The added travel time often results in an extra night on the east coast because the agency’s office is only open during business hours.
But what really gets to him is the regulation developed by a Cabinet agency born out of post-Sept. 11 concerns about thwarting terrorists and other illegal activity at the nation’s borders. It places the burden on the boaters to not only place a call to report their arrival back in the country, but then requires every person on board to appear before agency officials within 24 hours.
“Obviously we’re all concerned about terrorism and want to do everything we can to be secure,” said Lyons, whose company maintains yachts for about 50 full-time clients who sail out of Naples. “But there doesn’t seem to be any common sense about it. If I wanted to come in here as an illegal or something, there’s so many ways I could exploit this.”
The oft-traveled route to the Bahamas from Naples runs across the state through Lake Okeechobee to Stuart, where boaters are a roughly 70-mile shot from West End on Grand Bahama Island.
Getting there these days hasn’t been the problem; it’s the return that is drawing the ire not only of those who travel the waters but those whose livelihoods depend on the traffic.
During a normal season, roughly a half-dozen boats a day come through Roland & Mary Ann Martin’s Marina & Resort, which is halfway between Naples and Stuart off the lake in Clewiston. A 4-and-a-half-hour boat trip from Stuart, a lot of people stop there on the way home from the Bahamas.
And that’s when assistant manager George Pappa starts hearing the complaints from the boaters who had to trek to the nearest customs and immigration offices, also equidistant from Stuart in Fort Pierce or West Palm Beach.
For out-of-towners like those coming from Southwest Florida, the office-visit requirement means having to rent a car or take a cab to get to one of the two international airports that house the federal officials.
“It’s bound to affect business,” Pappa said. “If you’re held up, you might put up with it while you’re going through it. Then you think to yourself, ‘The trip was great, but I wouldn’t go through that mess again.'”
Two Florida congressmen have heard all about the problem from their constituents and have penned several letters to the Department of Homeland Security ever since it first posited the rules last summer. Those inquiries from Republican Reps. Mark Foley of West Palm Beach and Clay Shaw of Fort Lauderdale have resulted in an admission from an agency higher-up that it doesn’t have the money to pay for what many believe would be more effective security methods.Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for the department’s Border and Transportation Security division, said officials have “not identified funding” for a trusted traveler program that would allow many recreational boaters to undergo an initial background check and simply call in when they have arrived home. He also wrote in his response to the congressmen that “funding does not exist” to employ a videophone currently used at some parts of the Canadian border to allow citizens to speak with an immigration agent.
That face-to-face encounter was required for all those who had to clear Immigration and Naturalization Services, which merged with U.S. Customs when the new federal security agency was created after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since the two agencies came to be known as one ﾗ Customs and Border Protection ﾗ the process of melding their guidelines has produced what many think is a bizarre byproduct.
At one time, Customs officers would greet boaters coming ashore at some of the busier ports and would occasionally inspect their boats for contraband. That process gave way to the simple phone call, which some boaters note is equally as senseless as the current policy that adds the face-to-face meeting on top of the call.
Gary Guertin positioned his Stuart marina as a launching-off point for east coast boaters who come down the Intracoastal Waterway as well as those coming across Florida from Naples or Fort Myers.
He knows some people simply flout the law, despite the possible penalties: a $5,000 fine and boat seizure. Yet he also recognizes the importance of maintaining the nation’s security, so he has proposed a simple solution: place agency officials in Stuart just on Sunday afternoons to clear boaters through the process.
In fact, Homeland Security recently announced it would add a few agents to some Florida ports on busy holiday weekends but went no farther north than Sailfish Marina in West Palm Beach.
Agency spokesman Zachary Mann said that was simply a decision based on the volume of traffic, although figures provided to verify that point couldn’t back up the assertion. The agency couldn’t locate any numbers detailing use of Stuart’s port and only showed data listing the amount of phone calls and visits to Fort Pierce’s customs office.
Mann defends the agency’s overall coastline procedure, saying it must be proactive because it would be unrealistic to try to monitor every inch of coastline.
“The goal is to uncover the plot, who they are and (what) they are doing before they get a chance to get to the United States,” he explained. “The U.S. border, we consider that the last line of defense.”
How the agency has set up that line, however, is still of great concern to those in the industry such as Lyons, whose Maritime Services Group stands to lose business preparing and maintaining boats for trips.
“A few of my customers, they sit there and say, ‘We’d sure like to go back, but it’s such a hassle,'” he said. “They’re finding other things to do with their time, and it normally includes not using the boat at all.”
By JOEL ESKOVITZ, Naples News
