New Haven Independent

Teason traveled to Toronto earlier this month with a rented U-Haul. She hoped to transport $8,000 worth of new “pans” for the band she directs at St. Luke’s Church and for another band she’s helping to launch at Cold Spring School.

She had made a similar border crossing three years ago with no problem. This time, she spent the better part of a day wrestling with border agents and bureaucrats operating under new national-security rules aimed at tightening control of the borders and keeping dangerous people out.

After enduring repeated changed stories and mix-ups, Teason gave up. She spent an extra $1,000 and waited another week for the contraband to be shipped to New Haven.

The experience offered a frustrating but revealing firsthand look at cross-border travel in the age of terrorism.

“This is what it feels like to have it assumed that you’re a criminal. That’s what it felt like,” Teason said, safely back amid a basement room full of older steel pans in the basement of St. Luke’s on Whalley Avenue, her words echoing off the pans as she spoke. For nine years Teason has directed a band there, currently composed of 25 congregants (aged 14-80) playing the sweet, popping Caribbean music.

She also returned from the ordeal with sympathy for the border agents. “I have the sense that the pressure is amazing on them” to keep the country safe. “Somehow, taking away their discretion to allow a music teacher to bring steel drums into the country doesn’t seem to be it.”

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said agents have limited discretion. Anyone with in Teason’s position would likely have had a similar experience given gradually phased-in rule changes contained in the federal Trade Act of 2002.

Follow along with Teason’s account of her encounter at the border, and see if you deem it worthy of Lewis Carroll.

A Sunday Drive

“They make people smile,” Teason, a composer who has carved a local specialty in launching and leading steel pan bands, said of the drums. Just talking about the music ignites Teason’s own easy smile. “They’re pretty magic.”

Constructing musical “pans” out of 55-gallon steel drums is a specialized craft. It requires Builders sink the “head” (what garbage-tossers call the bottom), mark out and groove notes, hammer them to the right pitch, harden them with flame. Then they fine-tune the pitch with electric strobes and ball-peen hammers. (To learn more, click on the play arrow to watch Teason describe “guitar pan” steel drums.)

“There just aren’t the many builders around,” Teason said. The few in the U.S. charge too much for community organizations to afford. She travels to Trinidad to buy and bring back smaller pans.

For the 55-gallon pans needed for bands, Teason found Earle Wong (pictured), a builder with affordable product, in Toronto. She first did business with Wong three years ago. At the time she was helping the Highville Mustard Seed school start a band. During a family trip to Toronto she rented a U-Haul, visited Wong, filled the trailer, then drove across the border back home. Sailed right through customs.

So she expected the same to happen the weekend before last. She and her husband, Michael Bergman, were in Toronto again, to attend a relative’s bat mitzvah celebration. She rented a nine-foot trailer. She arranged to stop by Earle Wong’s to pick up 22 new steel pans worth about $8,000.

Most of the pans were intended for the private Cold Spring School in Fair Haven, which is forming a steel band. Some were for St. Luke’s, whose largely Caribbean-American congregation has supported a band playing all over New Haven under Teason’s direction. Teason is starting a second group there with congregants ranging in age from 7 to 60.

(Click on the play arrow to watch Tom Ficklin’s video of the St. Luke’s band performing last month at the Yale Center for British Art.)

U-Haul filled with pans, Teason and husband Michael took off early the Sunday before last; a doctor, he had to be home to see patients Monday morning. They left at 6:30 a.m.

By 9:30 they made it to the Fort Erie, where the “Peace Bridge” connects Canada and the U.S., at Buffalo. Teason had with her the paperwork she thought she needed: a NAFTA certificate declaring the drums’ site of origin and invoices showing the drums were for Cold Spring and St. Luke’s.

Canadian agents sent them across the Peace Bridge. On the other side, an agent from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, had other ideas.

He looked at Teason’s paperwork. Not good enough, he said. Because she had more than $2,000 worth of merchandise, she would need a special form for commercial drivers. She would need to find a broker to prepare it.

“I’m a music teacher,” Teason said. “I’m not a truck driver.” She would utter that line repeatedly as the day progressed.

Back Across Peace

The guard directed Teason to a building where a crossing guard met her and gave her the form. You’ll need to return to Canada and find a broker there, the guard said. Only it was a Sunday. Most brokers don’t work on Sunday.

Teason said she wasn’t selling the drums, only bringing them to a church and school.

Try “the warehouse,” the guard said, pointing Teason to a building by the checkpoint.

“The three people I talked to in the warehouse just kind of laughed at me,” Teason recalled.

“You’ve got $8,000 worth of stuff here,” they said. “Things have changed” since her last visit three years ago. Now she needed a broker and a “manifest.”

So Teason and her husband drove back across the Peace Bridge to Canada.

“The Canadian crossing guard was just like, ‘I can’t believe these guys. You should be able to file a one-time exemption and fill out your own manifest.’” He sent Teason to the Canadian version of the commercial warehouse. She parked there and went inside. Alone. “At this point I’m not letting my husband talk to anybody. He’s so angry. I don’t feel anger is going solve anything.”

No problem, a young man in the warehouse told Teason: You’ll find a broker next door who works 24-7.

It took circling the building a few times, but Teason found the door, and a woman working inside. A woman with this news: We handle only shipments coming from the U.S. into Canada. You need a U.S. broker

The woman called across the border to her U.S. counterpart, who said no U.S. brokers were working on Sunday.

Teason returned to the Canadian custom agents, who “shook their heads” and suggested she try to find other U.S. brokers. Then Teason returned to the commercial warehouse to ask the woman if she knew of other brokers besides the person she’d called. No, the woman said.

Another driver happened to be there, too. He said he had a list of other U.S. brokers. He went to his truck and brought Teason a list of four numbers.

She called them, asking if any could help her obtain a one-time exemption for her shipment of pans. The answers ranged from “We don’t do that” to “We can’t do that today” to: “The person who does that just went home.”

Plans C, D & E

At this point, Teason wondered if she could get husband Michael home in time to see his patients while she stuck around Canada to take care of business on Monday. She called US Airways and learned there was a 5:30 flight from Buffalo to Hartford that her husband could take for $269. Then she spent 45 minutes arranging to leave the trailer behind the Canadian customs warehouse.

“We must have paid the toll back and forth across this one bridge six times that day” making the arrangements, she said.

She learned that it would cost $25 to get her trailer back from the Peace Bridge authority if she left it there. She worried about leaving the drums. She worried about driving them back, too; “I’m not an experienced driver of trailers.”

She decided to cross back into the U.S. to make one more pitch. “I just wanted to get the pans here.”

A new crossing guard was on duty. Teason explained her story again.

“Could I at least bring back one set of drums that are worth less than $2,000?” she asked.

Nope.

“At this point we have your license plate number,” she recalled being told. “If you try to bring across anything worth more than $200, we’ll stop you.”

She asked whether she might find a more sympathetic person to speak with in the warehouse.

“They have taken away our sympathy,” the guard told her. “We have no discretion anymore.” But he did suggest a warehouse supervisor.

Inside, Teason encountered the same woman she’d seen that morning.

“Look,” Teason said. “I’ve been over to Canada. I can’t get a broker. I have to get a U.S. broker.”

The woman had new information this time. “You can file for permission online,” she suggested. “But it will take several days. How come you didn’t know about this?”

“Because I’m a music teacher. I’m not a truck driver.”

The woman pointed to a supervisor. He was sitting a desk nearby.

“Can she talk to you?” the woman asked the supervisor.

“No,” the supervisor told the woman. “But you can.”

A Woody Allen-esque exchange ensued. Teason spoke to the woman. The woman transmitted her questions to the supervisor sitting right there. The supervisor in turn responded to the woman, who in turn responded to Teason.

“He finally gave up trying to talk to me through her,” Teason recalled, and he addressed Teason directly: “Go in the warehouse lounge and wait.”

She went. She found rows of benches and vending machines. She sat on the bench until she heard a page: “Will Deborah with the drums please come to the office.”

She returned to encounter the warehouse manager. He spoke directly to her.

“I can give you a one-time exemption,” he said, “if you can find a broker who will take your business.”

A Knock On The Window

It turned out that some brokers work directly in the warehouse. (That morning, customs told her she needed to return to Canada to find a broker.)

The supervisor pointed Teason down a hallway. “They’re over there.”

Teason wandered Alice-like past walls with no signs. She came upon a fork. “I’ll try this hallway,” she decided. She found a FedEx window and a window with the name of a brokerage she’d called that morning from Canada.

She knocked on the glass window. A woman slid it open.

“I’m a music teacher,” Teason said. “I’m bringing a load of steel drums into the U.S. for a school. I’m told I need an ‘E’ manifest that has to be filed by a broker.”

The woman handed over a form.

“Do you have an account?” she asked Teason.

“No. I’m a music teacher.”

“You can’t do this without an account.” And on Sunday, she added, no one can fill out an account form for her.

She had additional information.

“And you’re going to need an ACE form. It’s going to take several months to get an ACE form, because you’re not a [commercial truck] driver.”

You always could ship the pans via UPS, the woman suggested. Teason wondered: How would she package it? And she worried about their fragility, about their being banged around. Not to mention the cost.

Didn’t matter. The UPS store was closed.

Teason made a decision. She would return the pans to Earle Wong in Toronto. He would have to ship the drums to New Haven. He knows how to package them right. It would cost the school an extra $1,000. But after six hours of wrangling, Teason had run out of options.

Next task: Get Michael to the Buffalo airport in time for his flight.

They made it to the ticket counter — only to to be told no seats were available. They hadn’t reserved seats when they called that morning because they’d still hoped to work a solution with the customs agents.

They re-inquired at U.S. Airways. Now they were told unreserved seats were available — but for $380.

Husband’s verdict: “That’s ridiculous.”

So they moved to a new plan: Both of them drove 100 miles back to Toronto to deliver the drums to Earle Wong, who agreed to handle the shipping. He said he’d never heard of a case like this before. Then Teason and husband Mchael turned around and kept driving. All night. They made it home by 4 a.m. Michael saw his patients.

Some Discretion Allowed

The Independent reached CBP spokesman Kevin Corsaro at the agency’s Buffalo regional office. Asked about the regulations, Corsaro brought two other colleagues onto speaker phone. Among them, they teased out the answers to why Teason encountered such an ordeal.

It’s true, the rules have been gradually changing, and growing stricter, in the wake of the new Trade Act passed after 9-11, they said.

“If the drums were for her, they would be a personal importation,” unless she were a commercial recording artist, Corsaro said. But because they were for the church and school, that made Teason’s role as driver “commercial” under the statute, he said.

Customs agents need at least one hour’s advance electronic notice when a “formal” commercial entry is coming over the border, he said. The cut-off between “formal” and “informal” is $2,000. A driver can get forms herself, but that process can take days. Brokers can take care of the job within an hour (assuming they’re working that day).

A border agent does have discretion to allow a driver to take as much as $8,000 worth of goods over the border as an “informal entry” if the agent truly believes the goods are for personal, non-commercial use. But, again, if someone is carrying merchandise for another entity, even a church or school, that falls under the commercial, not personal, category, Corsaro said.

The Music Makes It

The steel pans arrived at Cold Spring and St. Luke’s Monday, all in good shape. Teason was philosophical about her experience. “We’re not in jail,” she noted. All she lost was a day. Her clients lost $1,000 for extra shipping.

“It does make you ponder,” she said, “where we’re going as a country.”

Click on the play arrow to watch a subversive in action: Teason playing an old Calypso tune called “Tempo” (aka “Fish Fry”) on tenor pans. The old ones at St. Luke’s.