Border Inspections Yield No Leads in Kidnaping of Agent

Four days of intense searches along the International Border have so far failed to produce any leads in the investigation into the kidnaping of a U.S. drug enforcement agent in Mexico, U.S. officials said Monday.

Harold Ezell, regional commissioner for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said border agents have been looking for kidnap victim Enrique S. Camerena or his captors and have also stepped up their search for drugs in hopes that any low-level drug traffickers arrested might provide information that could aid the investigation.

Ezell, speaking at a border news conference, also confirmed that the searches have led to a dramatic decrease in Tijuana tourism. He acknowledged that the searches are meant, in part, to pressure the Mexican government to cooperate more fully in the search for Camerena, an 11-year veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration who was abducted at gunpoint Feb. 7 in Guadalajara, Mexico.

“The director of the DEA has been quite clear . . . that he felt the need for more effort by authorities in Mexico in locating the agent,” Ezell said. “We are extremely upset with the loss of the agent. Whatever we are asked to do, we’ll do. We can’t in good conscious do nothing. We obviously can’t go across the border and go house-to-house.”

Jerry Martin, assistant district director for the U.S. Customs Service, conceded that the odds were against the border searches turning up any useful information. But he said border officials felt a “moral obligation” to help in the hunt for Camerena.

“We have a DEA agent missing,” Martin said in an interview. “It’s kind of a brotherhood type thing. We owe him every chance we can give him. Maybe it’s a needle in a haystack, but if it works, it’s worth it.”

Camerena, 37, is a native of Mexicali, Mexico, and a naturalized U.S. citizen. He attended Imperial Valley College, spent two years in the Marine Corps and then had stints with Calexico and Imperial County law enforcement agencies before joining the DEA in 1974. As an officer in Calexico, Camerena was supervised out of the agency’s San Diego field division, a DEA spokesman said.

The search for Camerena or clues to his whereabouts moved to the border area Friday afternoon, when agents began inspecting the trunks, engine compartments and interior of every vehicle entering the United States from Mexico. On Sunday, those intensive searches were limited to only vehicles with Mexican registration after word came from Washington that no U.S. citizens were being implicated in the kidnaping.

Martin said DEA officials provided border inspection officers with a list of 15 Mexican suspects in the kidnaping and with one copy of a photograph of a suspect. He declined to give further details.

Ezell confirmed that officials were searching for specific individuals and cars but also declined to elaborate.

The wait at the San Ysidro border crossing, which had been reported as long as 7 1/2 hours Friday night and Saturday morning, was down to about one hour by Monday afternoon. The wait at the new Otay Mesa border crossing was even shorter. But border officials said the scene was still just as hectic.

“It’s been a madhouse,” said Hosea Owens, an operations supervisor for the INS. “The phones have been ringing off the hook with people asking how long the wait is.”

The shorter delays Monday were attributed in large part to a decrease in the number of Americans visiting Tijuana. U.S. officials provided figures that showed that 33% fewer automobiles crossed the border this weekend compared to the same weekend a year ago.

Pablo Gutierrez Barron, president of the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce, said merchants in tourism-related business reported that sales were 60% lower than expected for holiday weekends. He said restaurants that depend on the tourist trade reported up to a 70% decrease in business.

“Logically, this has affected the influx of tourists that normally come for a holiday weekend,” Gutierrez Barron said. “There really is nothing we can do because this is a unilateral action taken by the American government. We can’t even complain to our own authorities.”

Gutierrez Barron said that local television commentators have said the border check is a way to pressure the Mexican government to solve the Guadalajara kidnapping.

“The only thing I can say is that in our opinion, this is not the way to put pressure on the government. It hurts relations between the two governments and hurts our businesses,” he said.

Robert H. Feldkamp, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s headquarters in Washington, declined to comment on allegations that the border searches were being conducted to pressure Mexican cooperation in the case.

Feldkamp did confirm that the searches were prompted in part by concern that DEA chief Francis M. Mullen might be the subject of a kidnap attempt by a Colombian narcotics trafficking ring. He said the Colombian group had reportedly offered $350,000 for the kidnaping of Mullen, whom they hoped to exchange for imprisoned drug smuggling suspects.

Officials of the DEA, the Customs Service and the INS are scheduled to meet in Washington today to discuss the investigation and to decide how long the border searches should be continued.