(Host) The U.S. Border Patrol has responded to the heightened terror alert by setting up a checkpoint on Interstate 91 just south of White River Junction.
Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Leslie Lawson says agents are looking for people who are in the country illegally and other suspicious activity.
(Lawson) “Checkpoint operations are very good tools for us to use. They provide heightened deterrence and we are in a heightened state of vigilance right now during Orange Alert threat status. And we will be at this particular location indefinitely, as long as it’s needed.”
(Host) The checkpoint at the Hartford rest area is the only one in Vermont. Lawson says her division is running another one in eastern New York State.
She says additional agents were recently assigned to patrol the corth country from the Maine-New Hampshire border to Ogdensburg, New York.
(Lawson) “We’ve had 50 new agents permanently deployed to the Swanton sector and that will help us augment our operations and allow us the manpower to open checkpoints in addition to maintaining our forward deployment status on the line, so to speak, on the border. And we also have some temporary deployments up here from the Southwest border to help us out with that.”
(Host) The Border Patrol checkpoint is run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Lawson says all vehicles will be screened but not everyone will be stopped.