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Mail service has for decades come to the community through Maine. Parcels and letters are sorted in Saint Stephen, New Brunswick and then put on a truck to cross the border into Calais, Maine. The truck then drives about 80 kilometres through the United States, before crossing at Lubec through a Canadian border crossing into Campobello.

The truck is still taking the same route, but U.S. border guards, who had largely waived the postal truck through before, are now routinely searching mail shipments to Campobello. The change wasn’t announced, but residents began to notice little green stickers, indicating their packages have been searched.

Malloch, a former member of the New Brunswick legislature, said he doesn’t understand why things suddenly changed.

“We went years and years and years and never got our mail searched and now all of a sudden we’re getting our mail searched,” he said.

Photo by Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images/File

He wants local politicians to get in a room and find out what happened and figure out a way to fix it.

“Have they even sat down at a table or even made a phone call to one another?”

Steve Hatch has had a vacation home on the island for decades and moved there full time this year. He said none of his mail has been searched yet, but it’s definitely happening to others.

“I have seen the stickers. The postmistress says that every shipment of mail has some.”

Hatch said it takes away any sense of privacy.

“Anything you have coming by mail here an American can take a look at. If you have medical records coming by mail an American can take a look at it,” he said. “You have no expectation of privacy.”