Homeland Security threatens to seize farmland at US-Canada border

Your land? This ain't your land, boy. It's our land. Silly slave...land is for freemen.

But gosh, what are we supposed to do? Turr'ists are trying to smuggle nuclear bombs across the border...we just have to steal your land. Sorry.

Homeland Security threatens to seize 4.9 acres


Clement Rainville (right) and his family at Morses Line, part of Franklin, Vt. They say they need to keep the land to grow hay for their farm’s dairy herd.

Boston Globe -

The red brick house sits unassumingly on a sleepy back road where the lush farmlands of northern Vermont roll quietly into Canada. This is the Morses Line border crossing, a point of entry into the United States where more than three cars an hour constitute heavy traffic.

The bucolic setting of silos and sugar maples has become the focus of a bitter dispute that pits one of America’s most revered traditions — the family-owned farm — against the post-9/11 reality of terror attacks on US soil.

The Department of Homeland Security sees Morses Line as a weak link in the nation’s borders, attractive to terrorists trying to smuggle in lethal materials. The government is planning an estimated $8 million renovation here as part of a nationwide effort to secure border crossings.

It intends to acquire 4.9 acres of border land on a dairy farm owned for three generations by the Rainville family. Last month, the Rainvilles learned that if they refuse to sell the land for $39,500, the government intends to seize it by eminent domain.

The Rainvilles call this an unjustified land-grab by federal bullies.

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