The unmanned aircraft was deployed as part of a month long exercise to conduct surveillance missions between New York and Ontario to evaluate whether the Predator is necessary for the U.S.-Canadian border, according to CBP’s Office of Air and Marine. As part of the post-9-11 push to secure the US border, CBP had been using the unmanned aircraft along the Mexican border and began patrolling parts of the northern border in February.

Built by General Atomics, the Predator is the unarmed version of the Air Force’s MQ-9 Reaper. The Air Force’s Predators and Reapers are unmanned remote-controlled airplane mainly used for spying and attacking targets. Attacks using these drones have been responsible for the deaths of several hundred people in Gaza, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq.

More than half a year after the departure of the George W. Bush administration the United States is continues to be embroiled in its quest to secure the borders. The northern deployment coincided with warnings from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that terrorists have crossed into the U.S. from Canada. In the interview with CBC’s Washington correspondent, Neil Macdonald, US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, suggested that terrorists have routinely entered the country through Canada.

JN: …Canada is not Mexico, it doesn’t have a drug war going on, it didn’t have 6,000 homicides that were drug-related last year. Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it’s been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there.

NM: You know you mention terrorism, and there have been a lot of prominent American officials, including Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton when she was a senator and a number of other congressmen and senators, that have said that there has to be tighter security because a lot of the 9/11 perpetrators came in through Canada.

The fact, of course, is that they didn’t. They all came directly into the States, sometimes with U.S. visas. Senator [Charles] Schumer cited terrorists crossing at Buffalo, and then had to concede that that hadn’t happened. I think there’s kind of a popular misconception in this country that Canadians have been battling for a long time that we’re somehow a nest of terrorism. But in reality it’s not the case. And why is that view so common here?

JN: Well again, and I’m not privileged to say everything that has occurred. I mean, some things have occurred in the past. I can’t talk to that. I can talk about the future. And here’s the future. The future is we have borders. The borders are going to be enabled with greater technology, but it’s not going to be going back and forth as if there’s no border anymore.

I think that the United States Congress years ago said, You know what? We have borders both north and south, and we have to have some standards and implement them at the border, so we’re not going to, we’re no longer going to have this fiction that there’s no longer a border between Canada and the United States.

While there has been no talk of forcing Canadian families to get visas before coming to this country, the rules have changed. Canadians who are flying into the US will have to use their passports and in June, passports or a special ID card are now required to cross the border by car.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center’s 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment, “Illicit drugs are regularly transported through reservations that border Canada.” During CBP’s Operation Empire Shield, tests included flights over St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, where officials say cigarette and drug smuggling are a continuing problem. The reservation straddles the border of New York state, Ontario and Quebec.

Last month, federal and local officials carried out a large-scale drug bust operating through St. Regis, arresting “more than 45 people nationwide over their alleged roles in an international drug-smuggling operation that moved $1 billion worth of marijuana.”

Grant Jaquith, Assistant U.S. Attorney said, “The organization used two principled routes to cross the border into the United States. One using the St. Lawrence Seaway by and through the Akwasasne Mohawk Indian Territory and the other using a secluded wooded territory near Churubusco, New York.”

In June, responding to the growing tensions between the Canadian government and the Mohawk Akwesasne, Canadian officials have closed a bridge that spans the St. Lawrence river to connect Ontario to northern New York.

Tensions started when the Canadian Border Service Agency decided to arm border agents on Mohawk land by June 1st, 2009. This did not sit with the local residents. To show their dismay with the, the Mohawk community began protesting CBSA’s plan to arm border agents near the custom’s building. Fearing for their safety, CBSA agents voluntarily left their post. The departure of the customs agents prompted the CBSA to immediately shut down the Seaway International Bridge. After six weeks, Canadian border authorities reopened the bridge.

According to the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, arming the border agents was just the tip of the iceberg. For years, border agents from both sides have harassed the Mohawk community by refusing to accept the red-colored photo identification that allows them free passage and have been subjected to strip searches of young people and women. The Canadian post is the only land-border crossing that is located on a Native reserve.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama announced on that he would make immigration one of his legislative priorities, until now. Meanwhile, mass arrests and raids continue throughout the US, as the Obama administration expands the Bush-era policy by expanding immigration checks to local jails.

The advent of unmanned planes after 9/11 has allowed the US military to run lethal air campaigns without a lot of people noticing. The recent deployment of the Predator along the border is meant to gratify the American public’s concern over border security, while making it impossible to know when authorities are monitoring civilian activity.

While the Predators are currently deployed on the Southern US border and in Iraq and Afghanistan, General Atomics recently unveiled the prototype of the next generation of the Predator, called Predator C. Even more frighteningly, General Atomics Reapers are now considered as fighters by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

So it is not surprising that the son of 14-term California congressman, GOP presidential candidate and father of the border wall, Duncan Hunter already earmarked $26,000,000 for the development of the Predator C. The apple does not fall far from the tree.