During a July 11 live Web chat on the Rocky Mountain News' Rocky Talk Live weblog, News columnist and radio host Mike Rosen downplayed national security concerns involving the U.S.-Canada border in order to defend his support for building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Chat host Tim Skillern, multimedia reporter and producer for RockyMountainNews.com, asked Rosen: “Some contend that if national security is a legitimate companion issue to immigration, then we should not only build a wall on the Mexican border, but on the Canadian border as well. Thoughts?” Rosen replied: “We don't have the same degree of problems with people coming in from Canada. It's a question of priorities in doing what's practically doable.”

While recent media reports have pointed to terrorism-related security concerns about the Mexican border, several high-profile terrorism cases over the last few years have been associated with the northern border, not the southern border.

For example, in 1999, “Millennium Bomber” Ahmed Ressam traveled back and forth from Canada numerous times while plotting to blow up the Los Angeles airport before he was caught coming across the border with a trunk full of explosives. Furthermore, according to the Terrorist Travel staff report released by the 9-11 Commission in 2005, Ressam was handpicked by Abu Zubaydah, “one of al Qaeda's leading travel facilitators,” to obtain more Canadian passports “for other terrorists to use.”

The Terrorist Travel staff report also noted that Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer “committed serial immigration fraud during his planning to destroy the Atlantic Avenue subway in Brooklyn with explosives in 1997” and that he “was arrested on his third illegal entry into the United States along the northwest border with Canada.”

Most recently, according to a June 4 Associated Press story, 17 terror suspects arrested in Canada “who obtained three times the amount of an explosive ingredient used in the Oklahoma City bombing” may have had connections to U.S. terrorist suspects Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee. The AP noted that “FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said ... there may have been a connection between the Canadian suspects and a Georgia Tech student and another American who had traveled to Canada to meet with Islamic extremists to discuss locations for a terrorist strike.”

A June 30 AP article reported that Ahmed and Sadequee -- who grew up in Atlanta -- were arrested in March on terrorism-related charges. They “are accused of traveling to Canada to meet with Islamic extremists to discuss 'strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike.' ”

From the July 11 live Web chat on the Rocky Mountain News' Rocky Talk Live blog:

Tim [Skillern]: You've written that the borders need to be secured. Some contend that if national security is a legitimate companion issue to immigration, then we should not only build a wall on the Mexican border, but on the Canadian border as well. Thoughts?

Mike_Rosen: We don't have the same degree of problems with people coming in from Canada. It's a question of priorities in doing what's practically doable.

jay [questioner]: Speaking of keeping millions of people from illegally entering the US, how do you propose that we fund securing our borders?

Mike_Rosen: Just add it to the deficit, like everything else.