Trump's power with impunity is now being felt by ordinary Canadians

Quebec man says he was arrested by U.S. Coastguard while fishing in Canadian waters

Eduoard Lallemand and his wife, Darlene Fielding, talking about being arrested by US Coastguard officers while he says he was fishing in Canadian waters. (CTV)

Sometimes you post a story heedlessly on the open sewer of social media and it sinks unnoticed in the mire. However, some other times it rises to the surface, buoyed by giant blobs of gelatinous matter composed entirely of ignorance and ill-will.

I sent one such missive into the ether this morning, expressing the hope that Canadian authorities are investigating allegations made by a 60-year-old Quebec man, Eduoard Lallemand, that he was accused of fishing in American waters, arrested and put in jail.

The CTV story said Lallemand was fishing on Lake Champlain, near Venise-en-Quebec, around 15km north of the Quebec-Vermont border. He said he has fished there for decades and was adamant he was in Canadian waters. He said he was approached by a U.S. Coastguard vessel and told to turn off his engine because they said he was actually in American waters.

He complied but by his own admission, he became irate and told them they couldn’t cross the border and arrest him. He started his engine and said he would talk to them on the shore. He says the Coastguard vessel then pushed his boat into the U.S., capsized it and caused him to fall overboard.

Lallemand said he was then placed in handcuffs “aggressively” by the three officers, handed over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who finger-printed him and put him in jail in his still wringing clothes. He was released after a couple of hours.

The response to me posting a mildly sympathetic reaction was predictable. Twitter is the domain of people who wouldn’t give you the parsley off their fish. The milk of human kindness dried up long ago.

Even among Canadians there was no empathy for the fate of a man who is clearly shaken by his experience, and who, even a cursory glance from a trained law enforcement officer would have revealed, is no criminal mastermind.

Lallemand tried to flee from the law and brought it on himself, the mob proclaimed. “Fake anti-American outrage,” wrote one anonymous poster. “It’s funny how you root for criminals,” wrote another.

In its statement to CTV, the U.S. Coastguard said its boat was alongside Lallemand’s when he ignored commands to maintain course and speed, to allow officers to board. When it made an abrupt starboard turn, Lallemand’s boat capsized and he was thrown into the water, the statement said.

This took place at coordinates approximately 65 yards south of the Canada-U.S. border, the Coastguard said.

Sixty five yards! This was after Lallemand had switched off his engine and drifted for a period of time. Did the U.S. boat cross into Canadian waters initially? We don’t know because the U.S. Coastguard has not released the GPS records I asked for.

“The actions of the operator of the Canadian vessel are currently under investigation,” the Coastguard said in its statement.

Are the actions of the Coastguard officers? I asked. Silence was the loud reply.

It would seem to me the most likely explanation of events is that a hapless Quebec fisherman drifted into American waters, as has happened countless times in years past without repercussion, and was intercepted by a Coastguard vessel whose crew overstepped their boundaries. Lallemand described going under three times before he was hauled out of the water. If he had drowned, would the MAGA keyboard warriors still be blaming him?

This is worrying because it is the gasping brook trout, indicating that the stream is not healthy and there is peril ahead.

In the current political environment, what is more likely to be the cause of a U.S. Coastguard reprimand - being overzealous and nearly drowning a foreign national for straying 200 feet over the international boundary, or being too lax and allowing a Canadian to head home with a couple of trout caught in U.S. waters?

We are seeing signs of over-reach and excessive use of force by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. All countries need to secure their borders and enforce the rule of law. But the heavy-handedness of masked agents in the U.S. goes beyond that. They are bound by laws and constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Yet, why are ICE agents using flash-bang grenades and assault weapons against middle-class San Diego residents? Because they can.

The American Civil Liberties Union has a lengthy list of agents who have used ruses to enter homes, violated due process and abused their powers by targeting people attending hearings at courthouses.

Trump’s crony capitalism - cane sugar Coke anyone? - is increasingly being matched by a crony legal philosophy, where aggressive behaviour against political enemies that used to be illegal is now positively encouraged by the administration.

The terminus of such a journey is a very bleak place. The thought occurred while reading Isabel Allende’s In the Midst of Winter, in which two characters are discussing the human rights abuses that took place in Guatemala in the 1980s - 200,000 Indigenous people massacred, fifty thousand disappeared and a million and a half displaced.

How could soldiers commit atrocities against people from the same race and class as them? one character wondered.

“It’s true they were following orders but they carried them out intoxicated by the most addictive drug: power with impunity,” replied the other.

That is what we are seeing in the Trump White House - power with impunity. And, regardless of whether Lallemand’s boat drifted into U.S. waters, I think that is exactly what we saw from three U.S. Coastguard officers on Lake Champlain on Sunday night.