Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (IBETs)
2006 Joint Cross-Border Operations

• Windsor/Detroit IBET - Project OBOY
• Atlantic IBET - Operation "Jaloux"
• Pacific IBET - Operation Frozen Timber/E Printer
• Pacific IBET - Operation E-Patch

To effectively combat cross-border criminal activity, Canadian and American law enforcement are taking an international and integrated approach to their investigations.

Here is a sampling of joint cross-border operations involving Integrated Border Enforcement Teams and other key American and Canadian law enforcement partner agencies.

Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (IBETs) core agencies comprise: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the United States Customs and Border Protection/ Office of the Border Patrol (CBP/OBP), the United States Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the United States Coast Guard (USCG).

IBET agencies share information and work together daily with other local, state and provincial law enforcement agencies on issues relating to national security, organized crime and other criminality transiting the Canada/US border between the official Ports of Entry (POE).

Windsor/Detroit IBET
Project OBOY (February 2006)
Toronto, Windsor, Detroit and New York City

Human smuggling ring dismantled

An international ring smuggling people from several countries both ways across the Canada-United States border was dismantled after a two year international investigation initiated by the Detroit/Windsor Integrated Border Enforcement Team (IBET).

Fourteen people were arrested in Toronto, Windsor, Detroit and New York City in February, 2006. As a result of information received during this investigation, more than 100 illegal migrants were arrested as they attempted to cross the border — 24 from the United States into Canada, and the remainder from Canada into the United States.

The migrants—from China, Korea, Albania, and Eastern Europe— arrived in North America and were then smuggled across the Canada-U.S. border using various methods—hidden in the trunks of automobiles, on rail cars, in the back of transport trucks, and on small boats.

This investigation would not have been possible without the help and full cooperation of the following partner agencies: the Canadian Pacific Railway Police, Windsor Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police.

Atlantic IBET
Operation "Jaloux", (April, 2006)
Edmundston, New Brunswick.

Canadian and U.S. law enforcement make 26 arrests in major cross-border drug smuggling operation.

The Atlantic Integrated Border Enforcement Team conducted a two year investigation into cross-border drug smuggling between Canada and the United States, resulting in 26 arrests (11 in Canada, 15 in the United States)..

The bi-national operation netted 1,529 lbs of marijuana, 111,800 ecstasy pills, and more than $1.2 Million dollars in U.S. currency.

This investigation also received close cooperation from several other agencies from both countries, including members of the RCMP’s Bathurst-Edmundston Regional Drug Unit (comprising members of the RCMP and municipal agencies from Bathurst and Edmundston and assisted by RCMP members of St.Jérome, Quebec), and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The Operation was named “Jaloux” in Canada, and “Operation Hat Trick” in the United States.

Pacific IBET
Operation Frozen Timber/E Printer (June 2006)
British Columbia/Washington

Canada and the United States team up in a multi-agency probe targeting cross-border aerial drug smuggling. Criminal organizations used helicopters to ferry tons of drugs to backwoods drop sites.

Calling it one of the most brazen criminal schemes ever uncovered along the United States-Canada border, authorities from both countries wrapped up a two-year multi-agency operation targeting a network of smuggling organizations that used aircraft to ferry tons of drugs across the border, dropping many of the loads in broad daylight at remote wooded locations in Washington and British Columbia.

Operation Frozen Timber was conducted under the auspices of the Pacific Integrated Border Enforcement Team, a multi-agency law enforcement team comprised of representatives from Canadian and U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Members of the Pacific IBET worked closely with local, state, and provincial law enforcement agencies to target cross-border criminal activity and investigations involving national security and organized crime (in this operation, with the U.S. Forest Service, the National Parks Service, the Washington State Patrol, the United States Attorney’s Offices in Seattle and Spokane, the DEA, the FBI, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Sheriff’s Departments of Whatcom, Skagit, and Okanogan Counties, and the Abbotsford Police Department).

Since the investigation began in November 2004, the United States Attorneys’ Offices in Seattle and Spokane issued 45 indictments in connection with the case, resulting in more than 40 arrests to date. In Canada, the RCMP made six related arrests. In total, U.S. and Canadian authorities seized roughly 3,640 Kilograms of marihuana, 365 kilograms of cocaine, three aircraft, and $1.5 million in U.S. currency.

During the course of Operation Frozen Timber, U.S. and Canadian enforcement teams intercepted more than 17 drug loads, including one shipment in February 2005 involving five suitcases packed with 149 kilograms of cocaine that constituted the largest single cocaine seizure in the state of Washington last year. Authorities say the defendants planned to use a helicopter to smuggle the cocaine from a landing site in the Okanogan National Forest to British Columbia. Another significant seizure in the case came in September 2005, when agents followed two courier vehicles to a residence and recovered more than 545 kilograms of marihuana.

The operation was named “E Printer” in Canada, and “Frozen Timber” in the United States.

Pacific IBET
Operation E-Patch (April 2006)
British Columbia

RCMP and American law enforcement dismantle human smuggling ring

A multi-national, multi-agency collaborative investigation involving the Pacific Integrated Border Enforcement Team (IBET) resulted in the dismantling of a human smuggling ring operating out of the Lower Mainland in British Columbia in April, 2006.

The IBET team as well as the RCMP’s Border Integrity Immigration Section, led the investigation that resulted in the United States Attorney’s Office indicting 14 people for smuggling people into the United States through Canada for profit.

The network charged large sums of money for passage through Canada into the United States using houses in Vancouver and Toronto to harbour South Asian nationals while they awaited illegal entry into the United States. Smuggled aliens were then taken to area hotels where they awaited transportation to their final destination.

The arrests came as the result of a year long collaborative investigation called “E-Patch” in Canada, and “Smuggler’s Uncle” in the United States.