INS Calls Border Shutdown ‘Game’ : Officials Contend Customs Service Just Wants More People

Immigration and Naturalization Service officials Wednesday criticized the U.S. Customs Service for its management of the San Ysidro border crossing, accusing the agency of purposely tying up traffic in order to get more publicity and federal money.

“The bottom line is that Customs has some vacant positions that need to be filled and this is a way of getting it done,” said Harold Ezell, INS western regional commissioner. “Customs continues to play this game to give out the false impression that they are the only inspectors at San Ysidro. In fact, they are part of a marriage with the INS to man the border crossing.”

Ezell, along with James B. Turnage Jr., district director for the INS, spoke at a press conference Wednesday to dispel what the officials said were accusations by Washington-based Customs officials that the INS in San Diego was failing to do its fair share of the work at the San Ysidro border crossing.

Customs Commissioner William von Raab told a House appropriations subcommittee Wednesday that the INS was failing to abide by an agreement between the two agencies to man half the booths at the border crossing.

“Customs has accused INS of not keeping our part of the commitment at the San Ysidro border crossing,” Ezell said. “This is absolutely incorrect. The INS is part of a 50-50 commitment to the inspections.”

Delays at the San Ysidro, Tecate and Otay Mesa border crossings were more than an hour from Friday through Monday after the Customs Service began a crackdown on drug trafficking by reassigning inspectors who formerly manned the inspection booths at San Ysidro. Waits of more than two hours at San Ysidro are not uncommon. The normal wait at Otay Mesa and Tecate is less than 15 minutes.

Customs officials Wednesday refused to comment on Ezell’s remarks other than to confirm that the drug crackdown was still in effect, forcing some inspectors to conduct intensive vehicle searches in what is called the secondary inspection area at the border.

On Wednesday, 10 of the 24 traffic lanes entering the United States at San Ysidro were open. Of those lanes, five were staffed by Customs inspectors and the remaining five by INS inspectors.

“Mr. Ezell is entitled to his opinion,” said Mike Fleming, a Customs Service spokesman. “We are keeping up with our 50% commitment to staff the lanes.”

The Customs and INS inspectors technically share the responsibility of operating the 23 inspection booths at the San Ysidro border crossing, but generally Customs has more inspectors manning the lanes, Fleming said. So when its inspectors are reassigned for drug crackdowns, it creates a shortage at the border.

“It wasn’t our intention to back up the border,” said Dennis Murphy, a Washington-based Customs spokesman. “We had some management decisions. Essentially what happened is that agents that normally work the primary line (at the border) were taken back to secondary (inspection areas).”

Meanwhile, businesses in the border community of San Ysidro, which historically has relied on consumer traffic from Tijuana, are experiencing about a 50% drop in customers, said Paul Clark, president of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce. Clark said his organization is going to send a resolution to Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) asking for more Customs inspectors.

“We are supporting Customs on the drug crackdown, but I think they need more manpower,” Clark said.

Ezell concedes that both agencies should open up better lines of communications.

‘This is the same thing they did in the Camarena case,” Ezell said, referring to an intensification of inspections by Customs officials in February and March of 1985. The operation, an attempt to apprehend suspects in the torture-slaying of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena as well as to confiscate drugs, caused delays of two and three hours along the U.S.-Mexican border as some border stations were closed completely.

“In the Camarena case, they didn’t tell us that they were going to shut down the lanes. They cut down on the number of lanes and then ‘boom,’ just like that, they shut down the border,” he said.