PORT ANGELES — Three Stop the Checkpoints Committee members delivered a petition with 518 signatures opposing expansion of Border Patrol activities on the North Olympic Peninsula to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks’ Port Angeles office Thursday.
The purpose of the petition is to persuade Dicks, D-Belfair, who sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security, to curtail Border Patrol funding, said Lois Danks, Stop the Checkpoints Committee coordinator.
She said federal funding devoted to the Border Patrol should instead go to social services.
“Around here we have a lot of local needs, which have more importance than a detention center,” she told the Peninsula Daily News while sitting in Dicks’ Port Angeles office, 332 E. Fifth St.
The petition, which describes checkpoints “as an intrusion on our fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms,” urges Dicks “to demand that the U.S. Border Patrol agents respect the rights of all persons traveling on our roads and highways, treat everyone with decency and civility and cease establishing checkpoints at places other than our national borders.
“We ask that you curtail the financial resources devoted to this program.”
The 6th Congressional District that Dicks represents includes the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas and a portion of Pierce County.
Dicks, Border Patrol
Dicks already had questioned increased Border Patrol activity on the Peninsula.
He sent a letter on Feb. 9 to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to protest the checkpoints that occurred last year on U.S. Highway 101 near Forks and on state Highway 104 and asked for clarification on their use.
Border Patrol agents have not operated Peninsula checkpoints since last year. They have boarded buses traveling to and from the Olympic Peninsula and asked riders about their citizenship.
Border Patrol agents based in Port Angeles have increased from four to 24 during the last two years as part of a Homeland Security buildup on the country’s northern border.
Danks said the petition was sent to people through the group’s e-mail list and was brought to protests against Border Patrol checkpoints.
Dicks’ Port Angeles office representative, Judith Morris, said the petition should reach the congressman in Washington, D.C., by Wednesday.
It will be sent after the group provides some late-coming signatures.
Stop the Checkpoints member Charles Mair of Joyce, one of the three who delivered the petition, said the group members are not opposed to the Border Patrol, but they don’t think that the buildup is necessary.
“We support the Border Patrol but not the checkpoints or the detention center,” Mair said.
Member Tracey Schilling of Port Angeles, who also came to Dicks’ office to deliver the petition, said the group has about 200 members.
In Port Townsend, a petition was delivered to the City Council on April 11 by a sub-group of the Port Townsend Peace Movement.
The petition, calling for a reduction of Border Patrol activities, was signed by between 1,250 and 1,300 people.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
