Sunday, December 19, 2004 -
Manta, Ecuador - U.S. counterterrorism officials have set up a high-seas gantlet deploying Coast Guard cutters off Latin America and arresting foreign nationals trying to leave their own countries.
Coast Guard crews have blocked at least 37 Ecuadoran boats and detained more than 4,575 suspected illegal migrants over the past four years, records show. Then, over the past two years, they've sunk a dozen emptied migrant boats they deemed "unseaworthy" - setting them ablaze and firing on them with their .50-caliber guns.
The crackdown fits into a new worldwide strategy that U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials describe as "pushing our borders out." Enforcing U.S. laws abroad is crucial, they contend, to control record illegal immigration, estimated at 500,000 a year, and close security gaps terrorists could exploit.
"The president has authority to secure the borders of the United States," said Lt. Cmdr. Brad Kieserman, operations legal chief at U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Not only off Ecuador, but "anywhere in the world," Kieserman said, Coast Guard and Navy ships will "go to the source of transnational crime and interdict it before it gets to the United States."
Ecuador protests to the extent it can. Ecuador's fragile democratic government controls a military base U.S. military commanders count on, one of three newly refurbished "Forward Operating Locations" around Latin America.
And U.S. foreign policy experts warn that effective world policing means balancing benefits with backlash.
Today a new bitterness pulses through port streets here, where a centuries-old fishing culture fuses with the business of smuggling people north.
Coast Guard commanders "at least should have brought my boat back here and put it in the hands of Ecuadoran authorities," said Segundo Moreiro- Vegos, 41, owner of the 70-foot Diego Armando, sunk Feb. 22. He said he didn't know, when he rented it for fishing, that smugglers would cram on 103 migrants.
U.S. gunners "sink boats to show the power they have to stop migrants, to show the other fishermen not to (get involved) ... They board with machine guns, put everyone on the floor, tie hands," Moreiro-Vegos said.
"Before, I was feeling good about American people being down here. Now, I don't want to see them. We suffer so much because of these people."
Gunboat diplomacy
Some analysts see this as contemporary gunboat diplomacy. If foreign armed forces stopped U.S. boats in this way, "we'd call it an act of war," said John Pike, director of the Washington think tank Global Security. "There is no world government to enforce international law. It's always been the case that the strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must."
Others say U.S. officials are pushing too far, straining the already faint goodwill and support that the United States needs to fight terrorism, the illegal spread of weapons, and other threats.
"To have U.S. ships off the coast of Ecuador sinking boats is not the best public relations for the United States," said Robert Leiken, director of immigration and security studies at the Nixon Center think tank in Washington.
If stopping illegal immigration is the goal, cracking down on U.S. employers who hire illegal workers would be far more effective, Leiken said.
"Basically, we have one continent which is so far not penetrated by Islam; there's very little Muslim radicalism in Latin America," he said. "I'd think we'd want these people on our side.
"We're going to need people from Ecuador, El Salvador and other countries. To have anti-Americanism whipped up for what seem to be extraneous, unnecessary reasons ... I'm not so sure this is the way to be aggressive. As long as we aren't willing to close our own internal border by pursuing interior enforcement, how can we go out into other countries?"
U.S. courts have affirmed a right to enforce U.S. laws abroad if crimes affect the United States.
Neither the United States nor Ecuador has signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that would provide a forum for hashing out disputes.
Intercepting migrants off Latin America essentially "is a power play, it is pre-emption," said professor Ved Nanda, an international law expert at the University of Denver.
Small countries like Ecuador "have no leverage" and can't really retaliate, Nanda said. "But in the long run, this is not in our interests if we are trying to promote the international rule of law."
The key is whether the United States "pushes out our border" with permission of other countries, said Harvard University professor Joseph Nye. Asking for permission determines "whether you create ill will or not." And ill will can impede cooperation the U.S. needs, Nye said. Terrorism, drug-dealing, and mutating infectious diseases are growing problems the United States can't solve alone, "no matter how big our military is. ... We are going to need that much more cooperation."
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