Wayne County Star

Border Patrol Interrupts Boat Ride

2009-06-16,Louise Hoffman Broach | Wayuga Editor

   
U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped Butler farmer Robert Norris’ boat at Sodus Point on Friday. Norris said some of the people on the boat were relatives of one of his employees, a U.S. citizen.


A Border Patrol agent checks a woman’s paperwork.

SODUS POINT - Butler fruit farmer Bob Norris thought he was doing a good thing, offering relatives who were visiting one of his employees a late afternoon boat ride around Sodus Point.
Instead, it triggered an episode with the U.S. Border Patrol, who questioned the legal status of the visitors and another of Norris’ employees, eventually turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Four children were also in the group, Norris said, but they were released to a relative.
“They treated it like a drug raid,” said Norris about the episode, which occurred late in the afternoon on June 12.
On June 15, Norris helped his employee, a U.S. citizen who is Mexican born, bail out the visitors. Two are the man’s daughter and son-in-law, who have been in the U.S. since 1991. They live in Florida and already had applications pending for legal status, but it Norris said Border Patrol did not pay attention to papers they had with them.
The four children, who are citizens, belong to the couple, Norris said.
Their grandfather, Norris’ employee, came up to Sodus Point to retrieve the youngsters. Border patrol turned over their parents, as well as three other people, to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They were taken to Oswego, and then the women were transferred to the Ontario County jail. The men went to the Wayne county jail. Norris had to take his employee to Batavia to post bail before any of them could be released.
One man, who was another of Norris’ employees, was not released. Border Patrol spokesman A.J. Price said the man had previously been deported and was in the U.S. illegally a second time.
Norris said the man had presented him with what appeared to be valid information when he was hired and he had no way of knowing that the identification was fraudulent. He also said he did not know the status of the other two people who were detained. He said he was hiring an immigration attorney for his worker’s family, however, so their status can be cleared up.
Border Patrol spokesman A.J. Price said the officers were on a routine boat patrol when they noticed Norris’ vessel on Lake Ontario. The concern initially was there were too many people on Norris’ boat; Price said officers counted 11. Price also classified the interaction with the agents as “voluntary.”
But Norris said it didn’t feel that way to him.
“There was nothing voluntary about it,” he said. “They ordered me back to the dock.”
He said Border Patrol did question the number of people on the boat, but Norris said he could carry up to 12 people safely. All of his passengers were wearing life jackets and the boat was not overloaded.
“I don’t think they were prepared for what I had to say to them,” he said.
 Norris said he told the officers that they were racially profiling the people on his boat because they were Mexican. He noted that his daughter, who was also on the boat and who is white, had no proof of citizenship either, but she was not detained.
He also said the agents accused him of smuggling illegal aliens because he was in international waters.
“I laughed at them,” he said, noting he was just outside of the channel into Sodus Bay when he was stopped.
The irony of the matter to Norris is that he usually uses the H2A program when he employs migrant farm labor, so he can be sure of their legal status. He said the one worker he had who was detained did not come under H2A. He questioned what the detention would mean for his status with H2A, but he said the Border Patrol officers said it wasn’t their problem.
 Norris said border patrol agents told him they were patrolling the area, looking for drug smugglers.
“I wonder how many people they found with drugs,” he said.
Norris said he is not a particularly political person, but the incident has caused him to see the importance of drawing attention to the issue.
“I think it’s pushing me to action,” he said.