FRANKLIN, Vermont - May 3, 2010 - This is one sleepy border crossing.

At the Morses Line Port of Entry, on the U.S.-Canada border, the border station is located smack-dab in the middle of a dairy farm.

On average, 2 ½  cars pass through an hour. The pace is so slow that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who man it have been known to fill out their days by driving golf balls in an adjoining meadow, shooting skeet or washing their cars.

Some here think the World War II-era brick structure that houses the border station should be abandoned entirely.

Not the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: The government, which got $420 million from the federal bailout to modernize land ports like this, wants to spend about $7 million to build an expanded station. To do it, the government says, it needs an adjoining 4.9-acre parcel now used to grow hay and corn.

Owners of the Rainville dairy farm were told last week that if they won't sell the hayfield for $39,500, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will use eminent domain to seize it.

"The arrogance of it is breathtaking," said Brian Rainville, 37, whose parents and two brothers run the 220-acre farm and milk 80 cows on it. "Why are we being asked to make that kind of sacrifice when they can't demonstrate a public need?"

The public need is national security, according to Customs and Border Protection.

The building, which went up in 1936 after the government seized about a half-acre of land from the farm's then-owner, is outdated by any standards. Its detention area is a bench with a set of handcuffs attached to one end, just inside the glass front door.

"There's a culture gap here as wide as the Grand Canyon," he said Tuesday, sitting in the living room of the farmhouse. "They act like the farm is a movie set, where you take part of it out and the rest is supposed to function. It doesn't work that way."

"Save This Farm" reads the hand-painted 4-by-8-foot wooden sign that Brian Rainville recently erected on the land.

"It's what we do, it's who we are," he said. "We're hanging on by our fingernails. The last thing we need is for the government to break us."