THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And more than a few pilots living and flying near the border are getting pissed off at the Gestapo tactics that the Border Patrol has adopted.

“We’re opposed to drugs and drug runners and illegal uses of aircraft, but we do feel very strongly that when you do a police action like your plane comes to a stop on a runway and its surrounded by eight SUVs, police get out, guns drawn, body armor, dogs, that you need to have a reasonable suspicion that illegal activity has occurred or is about to occur,” said Ken Mead, general counsel for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

It can also be a financial hardship. Professional pilot Dean Holiday lost about $1,600 a month in income when he stopped flying one of his best clients after more than a half-dozen officers, guns pulled, stopped them in Marana, Ariz. He didn’t want to repeat the experience, thinking his client was likely involved in shady dealings even though nothing was found on the plane.

Arturo Caballero has been stopped by agents twice after flying with his wife, son and pet chihuahua. On one family trip home to Bay City, Texas, Caballero was separated from his wife and son, who at the time was a student at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., for questioning while agents searched the plane.

“Seems to me they’re just throwing a big, huge net into the sky in hopes of catching something,” Caballero said. “What? They don’t know. But something will come up.”

The pilots’ association, which represents more than 350,000 pilots and plane owners, says it has collected more than 50 cases in which members _ despite never crossing a U.S. border _ were searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents or local law enforcement “without probable cause or reasonable suspicion of illegal activity.”

The association met last month with Border Patrol officials in Washington to discuss pilots’ concerns. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske assured them the agency would conduct a comprehensive review of the searches, the association said.

None of the flights in which planes were searched crossed any borders, Mead said. He said that much like drivers on the nation’s highways, pilots should not have to worry about having gun-toting agents tapping on their plane windows asking to search their plane.

The complaints that border agents are conducting egregious and intimidating searches of U.S. citizen pilots and plane owners come at a time when the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is under increased scrutiny. McClatchy and other news organizations have chronicled the deaths of at least 21 people, a trend that has led to criticism that the Border Patrol has expanded too quickly to ensure proper training of new agents.

Too much Authorita! And too little training are a bad mix.