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Arizona Town Upset by Illegal Alien ‘Dumping’

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Times Staff Writer

City officials in the Arizona border town of San Luis are up in arms over a U.S. Border Patrol program that they say is turning their community into a “dumping ground” for trouble-makers and border bandits from the Tijuana region.

Since last Thursday, the Border Patrol has been busing aliens captured in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego to the remote desert community, 25 miles south of Yuma, to “relieve pressure” on the San Diego border region.

The theory, according to a Border Patrol spokesman, is to discourage re-entry by aliens into the U.S. by removing them from the San Diego region. An average of about 1,300 aliens are arrested every day by the Border Patrol at San Ysidro.

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“We are very upset,” said Elias Bermudez, vice mayor of San Luis, a town of 2,000. “These were the trouble-makers in the Otay Mesa area. These people are the criminal element. They prey on other illegal aliens. (The Border Patrol) is dumping this problem in our lap.”

Border Patrol officials insist that none of the 45 men transported to San Luis each weekday is a criminal.

“We’re not sending border bandits or trouble-makers. They’re just people who have made an illegal entry into the United States,” said Gene Smithburg, assistant chief agent of the Border Patrol’s San Ysidro office.

San Luis Mayor Marco Antonio Reyes also disputes the Border Patrol’s numbers, claiming that as many as 100 additional aliens have passed through his town on some days, double the normal rate. He also questioned Smithburg’s contention that there were no criminals among the new aliens.

“There has to be some reason to send all these people down here other than that they’re just overcrowded,” Reyes said. “They’ve had very specific problems; tensions, violence and shootings . . . . There’s no reason for us to be the dumping ground for other people’s problems.”

Smithburg stressed that the busing program, which has been tried along other sections of the U.S.-Mexico border but never in San Diego, is only a two-week test, and will end May 24.

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This does not ease Reyes’ concerns.

“Two-week testing for what?” he asked. “To see if it works out so they can keep doing it? Will we have four busloads (a day) instead of two? We’re not going to stand here and be the guinea pigs of the Border Patrol.”

The controversy began last Thursday when a van carrying the first group of the Otay Mesa aliens arrived in San Luis. Every weekday since then, city officials say, at least one Border Patrol bus has pulled into the town, depositing 45 to 50 aliens to be escorted across the border to San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, which is a city of 50,000.

“They’re going to go back to the Tijuana area,” Bermudez said. “They have no money. They have no transportation. So, they’ll have to steal. We know these people will come into the U.S. and rob purses and strong-arm people.”

However, San Luis Police Chief Eddie Jenkins said there has been no increase in crime since the busing program started.

Smithburg said such fears are groundless, stressing that the men bused to San Luis and the nearby town of Andrade, Calif., are chosen randomly from the thousands of people from the Mexican interior who are apprehended on Otay Mesa each week.

“What we’re trying to do is remove them from the local area,” Smithburg said. “The desert area is more wide-open. It would be easier to apprehend them if they tried to re-enter the country.”

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Smithburg conceded there is no guarantee that the men won’t cross back into San Luis.

“We have no idea what happens when they get over there,” Smithburg said. “I wouldn’t think that they’d stay in the (San Luis) area. We hope they’ll go back to where they came from.”

That hope, however, is not enough to assuage San Luis officials. Earlier this week, Reyes asked Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Morris Udall (D-Ariz.) to bring federal power to bear to stop the busing of the aliens. Both congressmen have contacted the Border Patrol, though an aide in DeConcini’s Washington office said the senator is incredulous about Reyes’ complaint.

“The mayor just said they were getting busloads and busloads,” aide Tim Carlsgaard said. “He tends to exaggerate sometimes. He made it sound like there could be violence. But he hasn’t given us any kind of documentation.

“We’ve gone about as far as we can. We’ve contacted the Border Patrol. We’ll write a letter. But we can’t write anything until we get some documentation from the city officials.”

Reyes said he is compiling the requested data, but that he does not think it is necessary.

“I don’t see why we should be in the business of documenting the Border Patrol’s moves and strategies,” Reyes said.

Reyes and Bermudez said they sympathize with the Border Patrol’s plight, but that busing aliens to their town is not the answer.

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“We appreciate the problems they’re having and we would like to see them do something--but not at our expense,” he said.

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