By THEODORE BOSEN
THE NORTHERN BORDER ALLIANCE Program, begun by Chris Sununu in 2023 and continued by Kelly Ayotte, awards state funds to local participating police in the north country who enter into agreements to be directed by both state and federal authorities in policing the Canadian border within the bounds of the Border Patrol’s territorial jurisdiction – 25 miles.
The NBA program bypasses local government to pay for related police overtime, training, and overhead, while promoting applications for federal DHS grants to buy equipment, including Tactical Gear, Breaching Equipment, Mobile Command Vehicles, Mobile Repeaters, Infrared Illuminators – and that’s just so far. Berlin, a small city whose police entered into an NBA agreement, and is more than 35 miles away from the nearest point on the Canadian border, has applied for all of that.
The rationale for the program, per Chris Sununu, was that federal Customs and Border Patrol, a Department of Homeland Security agency, was not doing its job on the New Hampshire border, leading to the proliferation of illegal crossings and drug activity affecting Berlin and points south. That is still cited by each resolution authorizing the purchase of each piece of equipment for Berlin. Yet, since the first six months of the program, there have been no encounters of illegal crossing at the border and no drug seizures. Moreover, all drug activity in Berlin, including arrests and prosecutions, has been at historically low rates, and dropping, since before the program went into effect, yet each resolution authorizing the purchase of equipment recites the same lies as justification, noting the laughable claim that major roads from Canada run through the city to drug destination points to the south. (Every Berlin resident knows that no Canadian vehicle would ever come through Berlin on their way to Massachusetts).
Of course, we occasionally had an immigrant or two here working in a restaurant with an expiring visa who scrambled to extend them in immigration court, or sought other such remedies, upon Ayotte’s election as governor, as she called all undocumented immigrants “criminals” who she would seek to have rounded up and detained, whereupon the manager of Berlin’s most popular restaurant, Marisol Fuentes, immediately married an American twice her age who turned out to be a psychopath, murdering her with a shotgun at work after police failed to protect her.
Unfazed, Ayotte came to a Coos County Commission meeting shortly thereafter, referring again to undocumented immigrants as “all criminals” that she would target for detainment and deportation. Ironically, Fuentes managed the most successful restaurant and tourist attraction in the city, which, since her murder over one year ago, has sat empty and silent. However, with that being the extent of any actual criminal activity in Berlin connected with immigration, the Berlin Police Commission, Police Chief, and majority-cop City Council, already in possession of a bearcat, have applied for all the rest of the above items.
So what is it these high-tech assets do? Well, according to the manufacturers’ descriptions, a Mobile Command Vehicle is equipped with audio-visual and radio capability, including satellite, and a Long Range Acoustic Device. Mobile Repeaters attach to drones outfitted with Infrared and Thermal technology. All are designed to engage in either “crowd control” or major disasters. Berlin’s cop-councilors argue that it’s for “emergencies,” but what kind of emergency can one envision in New Hampshire’s 40th largest town where only 7,000 of its 9,000 reported population are not in a jail? Wouldn’t major disasters in Seabrook, Hampton, or Portsmouth be more likely given their dense populations’ propensity for floods, hurricanes, and nuclear accidents? Besides, the NBA program, by its own terms, designates as its focus the 25-mile federal border jurisdiction in which Berlin does not even lie!
How do these items work? The LRAD, for instance, sends an acoustic beam up to two miles that can make announcements or generate ear-splitting noise to focus on a narrow location with an assembled crowd. Mobile Repeaters extend the reach of wi-fi remote control, using drones, with the potential to direct a fleet of them, equipped with infrared technology that can see at night and detect thermal images or movements, even inside buildings. Breaching equipment, far more capable than what we know as “the jaws of life,” is designed to instantly crack open any kind of door or window in a building or vehicle in order to remove persons or passengers on the other side. Tactical Gear is SWAT Team material, not emergency wear. Berlin’s going for it all. Why?
One clue is that the latest resolutions approved by the City Council literally state that each piece is for “anti-terrorist” activity and all pieces MUST carry the label “D-H-S!” Recently, in Maple Grove Minnesota, where former Border Patrol Czar Greg Bovino was staying during the DHS invasion of that state, a Mobile Command Vehicle with an LRAD was deployed for crowd control in front of his hotel. It was activated to disperse the crowd. Several protesters complained of headaches, earaches, and disorientation as a result, after which a professional physicians organization warned that, depending on the frequency level put out, LRADs can cause anything from irritability to nausea, increased body temperature, brain damage, burns, and internal tissue bubbles. Other reports in Minnesota during the DHS siege by both ICE and CBP troops consisted of long-distance drone surveillance and buzzing with infrared illuminators. Moreover, we have all seen the videotaped instances of vehicle breaching all over the country in order to quickly extract passengers.
Why a crowd control arsenal in quiet little Berlin? Could it be the fact that Berlin is the home of a Federal Correctional Facility that is now housing hundreds of detainees that ICE and CBP have rounded up from other places in the country? Could it be in anticipation of the same thing that happened last year in Texas at the Prairieland Detention Center, where American citizens exercising their free speech rights outside the facility were rounded up and prosecuted as “Antifa Terrorists” under an illegal Trump EO that falsely defines Antifa, which former FBI Director Wright, under oath, denied was even an organization, as a “terrorist group”. Eight of those American protesters were given sentences of forty to a hundred years each!
This reason makes the most sense, yet so far, no one has been privy to the actual training being given to participating cops, despite demands to reveal it. Those cops, however, according to NBA docs, must take direction from DHS when it comes to town, despite the fact that Berlin’s City Charter does not provide for designating police officers to patrol under the jurisdiction of extraterritorial law enforcement entities. Such de facto amendments to a city’s charter are in violation of Article 39 of the New Hampshire Constitution which prohibits the state’s altering of a city charter without its citizens’ prior approval by referendum.
Meanwhile, the uninformed citizens of Berlin, who don’t yet follow the live feeds of their own city council, or spend a dollar to read their formerly free weekly newspaper, let alone others, are largely unaware of the actual uses for this tactical equipment, or even that it’s coming, or that there are even any ICE detainees in town (there are up to 250 at any one time). This is why the Feds have been squirreling ICE arrestees to Berlin to stay one step ahead of attorneys, families, and media, seventy percent of whom, according to DHS records, have no criminal history whatsoever.
Thus, Berlin, New Hampshire has become the first stop in the northern gulag and will soon have the capability of high-tech crowd control should citizens decide to rise up to exercise their first amendment rights in opposition. Notably, the first amendment is no barrier for the Berlin cop-council. The same day they approved half of this crowd control equipment under false pretenses, they threw a planning board member out of office for speaking out against police use of excessive force in a local shooting.
I believe we are ripe for fascism in Berlin and much of clueless, freestate-voting New Hampshire. Moreover, Kelly has invited Trump to send “observers” to our polling places on election day! Why not? We now have trained crowd control operators in town who will soon be outfitted with DHS-labeled implements. What could go wrong?–
Theodore Bosen
Berlin Trails Farm
Berlin,NH 03570berlintrailsinn.com
Email: tlbosen@gmail.com