US Border Patrol: Michigan Residents Should Watch the Great Lakes for Suspicious Activity

Many Michiganders plan weekend and summer getaways to spend some time along the state's Great Lakes. We don't really think about the fact that many of these lakes are also potential ports of entry, legal or otherwise, as the lakes border Canada.

The US Border Patrol has signs posted at some beaches and lakeshore areas giving beachgoers some tips of what to look out for and what to report.

One such sign is located at Presque Isle park in Marquette. The park is on the south shore of Lake Superior which makes it, of course, directly south of Canada. The sign lists the following as potential suspicious activity:

• Boats operating without lights at night
• Boats dropping off passengers and leaving immediately
• Boat passengers appearing lost, nervous or unfamiliar with boats
• Boat passengers with luggage

The sign gives a number to US Border Patrol.

READ MORE: Unique Michigan Vacation Rental Was Once a Border Patrol Station

While we might think only of Michigan's international border crossings as road crossings in Detroit, Port Huron and Sault Ste Marie, any boater who pulls up to a dock along the Great Lakes must report if they'd been in Canadian waters.

Operators of small pleasure vessels arriving from a foreign port or place, to include any vessel which has visited a hovering vessel or received merchandise outside the territorial sea, are required to report their arrival to CBP immediately upon landing in the U.S.

A border security think tank has some truly astounding numbers of the amount of marine traffic that happens on the Great Lakes and St Lawrence Seaway between the two counties. There are approximately 600 commercial vessels and 5.4 million recreational craft on the lakes leaving to the potential for "ample camouflage for smugglers and terrorists."

So as they say elsewhere, if you see something, say something.