A Canadian boater says he was ‘kidnapped' by the US Coast Guard. American officials say he crossed into US waters.

Boston Globe

2 days ago

'It's impossible I was in America,' he said.
By his own admission, Lallemand ignored the Coast Guard's commands and tried to hightail it toward the Canadian shoreline. By the end of the encounter, his boat had capsized, he'd been pulled from the water, and he was handcuffed — bruised and bloodied — in a Vermont jail cell.
'The way I look at it, they kidnapped me from Canada and took me to the United States,' he said.
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The Coast Guard said it has investigated the incident and confirmed that both vessels were in the U.S. and that its crew members acted appropriately.
The encounter occurred as the U.S. continues to harden its vast northern border in an effort to curb illegal immigration and smuggling. President Trump's signature spending bill, signed into law last month, directs some $170 billion to border security and immigration enforcement, including close to $25 billion for the Coast Guard, largely to upgrade its fleet.
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The agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, plays an important, if little understood, part in securing the country's borders, along with its better-known search-and-rescue, boater safety, and navigational missions.
'As long as the Coast Guard has existed, we have served in this role of controlling borders in our ports and along those maritime boundaries,' said Captain Matthew Baker, who commands the agency's northern New England operations from a station in South Portland, Maine.
In addition to patrolling the coastal border between Maine and New Brunswick along the Saint Croix River, Baker's sector is in charge of two large inland waterways that stretch into Québec:
For the first time in years, the Coast Guard deployed a 29-foot response boat to Memphremagog this summer, Baker said, largely to secure the border. For the past decade, it's sent a similar boat to Champlain each summer to augment year-round operations at a Coast Guard station on the Burlington waterfront.
'The lake is obviously pretty big, so it's kind of tough to be everywhere at once,' said Boatswain's Mate First Class Eric Dahl during a tour of the Burlington station last week.
The portion of the land border on either side of Lake Champlain, known by US Border Patrol as the Swanton Sector, is
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The Coast Guard has boarded 355 vessels along the border in northern New England this year, Baker said — 261 of them on Lake Champlain — but it has encountered no human or drug smuggling. Baker theorizes that while Champlain is 107 miles long, the two sections crossing the border are quite narrow and easy to patrol, which may serve as a deterrent.
The wider of those two sections is Missisquoi Bay, where Lallemand fishes every day he can.
On July 20, the Canadian welder visited his lifelong friend, Alan Miller, at the campground and RV park the Miller family operates near a peninsula that juts south from Québec into the United States. Lallemand borrowed Miller's 16-foot aluminum boat, as he often does, and motored east in search of bass.
Miller said he saw Lallemand on the water shortly before the international incident took place at around 5:30 p.m., though he did not witness the actual event.
'He was quite a ways in Canada when I last saw him,' Miller said. 'He knows where the border is and he would never go on the other side.'
In winter, when the bay is frozen over, Lallemand helps Miller plant red flags in the ice just north of the border to help ice-fishing Canadians avoid crossing into the U.S. In summer, Lallemand uses a pair of buoys and a line-of-sight to the land border to keep his bearings.
But according to a written statement issued by the Coast Guard, Lallemand was about 110 yards south of the border when the agency's seasonal 29-foot response boat approached him and turned on its lights and sirens.
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'Our boat crews know exactly where we are, all the time,' Baker said, citing GPS readings and navigational aids. 'He was on the US side of the border.'
According to Lallemand, his conversation with the four-person Coast Guard crew soon became heated as they argued over where they were.
'He started yelling at me like I'm rotten fish,' the Canadian boater said, referring to one crew member. 'It's like they let the dog out.'
Lallemand said he felt unsafe with nobody to witness the encounter, so he started his engine and headed for shore.
What happened next is in dispute.
According to the Coast Guard statement, Lallemande 'made an abrupt starboard turn and struck the port bow' of the response boat about 65 yards south of the border, causing the aluminum boat to capsize.
In Lallemand's telling, the Coast Guard vessel attempted to push his boat south, as if it were trying to move him into the U.S., and then became even more aggressive.
'They rammed me,' he said. 'Their boat was almost in my lap. I thought, 'Oh my God. I'm going to die.' '
Edouard Lallemand pictured at a hospital early in the morning of July 21. He was treated for minor injuries sustained the previous evening while the US Coast Guard sought to apprehend him near the international border.
Edouard Lallemand
Lallemand claimed the Coast Guard was slow to throw him a flotation device after he went overboard. Even after the crew members did, he said, he refused to get in the boat and tried in vain to swim to shore. When the crew finally pulled him aboard and handcuffed him, Lallemand said, they injured his arm and scraped his limbs on the deck, causing him to bleed.
The Coast Guard vessel towed the overturned aluminum boat to shore and handed Lallemand over to US Customs and Border Patrol agents, who held him for several hours in a cell at a nearby facility. A spokesperson for that agency said it returned Lallemand to Canada without filing criminal charges or levying a fine. The Coast Guard said it's continuing to investigate Lallemand's actions.
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'He was really hurting,' said Miller, who saw his friend later that night. 'He was at a loss for words. He couldn't believe what happened.'
Lallemand is still seething. Though he lives mere miles from the border and used to frequent a bingo game on the Vermont side, he now expects to stay closer to home.
'I love going over there,' he said of the U.S. 'But you think I'm going back there again? I don't think so.'