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| In search of secure borders worldwide
Retired CBPO helps establish U.S.-style ports of entry on Iraq’s border |
Tom Graber retired from CBP in December 2004 with 30 years of federal service. Because of his security clearance and his lengthy and unique work experience with INS, CBP and the U.S. Army, in 2006 he was asked if he would spend a year in Iraq assisting Coalition forces and the Iraqi government to establish U.S.-style ports of entry along the Iraqi border. In July 2006, Graber was deployed to Iraq as a contractor. Graber is currently embedded with a military unit stationed at Forward Operating Base Caldwell, in central Iraq, about 150 miles northeast of Baghdad. He works at a port of entry on the Iraq-Iran border. Here is Officer Graber’s account of his days in Iraq:| I work one-on-one with port of entry staff at POE Muntheria, on the Iranian border. My primary job is to mentor and train the POE staff—specifically the Port Director, General Khalid. I provide management training for General Khalid and his principal staff. I also provide other types of training like fraudulent documents identification and analysis and facial recognition to the POE staff, which numbers approximately 100. I seldom work with the Iraqi Border Police, as my area of expertise is port of entry.However, since I have also served as a Border Patrol agent, I have done briefings for Iraqi Border Police managers and have visited eight Iraqi Border Police forts/castles along the Iranian border northeast of Baghdad.A typical day at the POE consists of meeting with General Khalid first thing and having "chi" (hot sweet tea) with him each morning. It's customary and expected of all visitors. He is a Kurd, and the POE is in Kurdish territory. About 95 percent of the staff at this POE are Kurdish and 5 percent are Arabs.I wear a military uniform, including body armor and a Kevlar helmet, daily. I carry an M-4 rifle and a Beretta pistol. I ride to the POE in a Humvee gun truck. I travel with the Army everywhere they go and for all practical purposes I am a full member of the military unit.We travel over improvised explosive devices (IED) embedded roads on each trip from Forward Operating Base Caldwell to POE Muntheria—a one-way distance of 75 miles. It takes us about two hours to get to the POE and two hours to get back. We try not to travel during darkness because of the IED threat on the roads. I have seen our convoy directly hit by eight IEDs since arriving here. It is dangerous here...every day!The customs inspection process is interesting. No trucks from Iran are allowed to enter Iraq at this POE, except fuel tankers bringing gasoline from Iran to Iraq. All other cargo is trans-loaded from an Iranian truck to an Iraqi truck directly at the border. That means that the Iranian truck, in Iran, backs up to an Iraqi truck, in Iraq. Day workers remove the cargo from the Iranian truck to the Iraqi truck. The Iran-Iraq border in the trans-load yard is simply a concrete jersey wall barrier that is four feet high. The two trucks back up tailgate to tailgate over the jersey wall barrier and the trans-loading process begins. Iranian day workers (dressed in blue) do the trans-loading one day and Iraqi day workers (dressed in orange) do the trans-loading, the next day.I observe this process and train the Customs Police how to do a proper random inspection of cargo being brought into Iraq. I do this for about two hours a day after spending time each morning with General Khalid.Before I got here the Customs Police were not checking any cargo coming into Iraq unless they had specific information on a specific truck. Now they check each truck and perform random checks of cargo on each truck. |
It’s a hard life—fraught with dangers—but without men like Tom Graber, Iran would not have the chance to learn how to protect their borders or their people. EC |
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