Illegal Alien ‘Dumping’ Upsets Town

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

Since last Thursday, the Border Patrol has been busing aliens captured in the San Ysidro area of San Diego to the remote desert community, 25 miles south of Yuma, to “relieve pressure” on the San Diego border region and to discourage re-entry by the aliens into the United States. An average of about 1,300 aliens are arrested each day by the Border Patrol unit in San Ysidro.

“We are very upset,” said Elias Bermudez, vice mayor of San Luis, a town of 2,000. “These (people) were the troublemakers 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 taken to San Luis each weekday is a criminal. San Luis Police Chief Eddie Jenkins confirmed that there has been no increase in crime since the busing program started.

Gene Smithburg, assistant chief agent of the Border Patrol’s San Ysidro office, said the busing program, which has been tried along other sections of the U.S.-Mexico border but never in San Diego, is a two-week test that will end May 24.