New Group Seeks Tighter U.S. Border Security

The regional commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service came to Orange County Tuesday to seek the support of a group of housewives, business leaders and professionals in the effort to tighten security along the nation’s borders.

The official, Harold Ezell, spoke at the posh Center Club in Costa Mesa as the guest of Americans for Border Control, a new Orange County-based organization.

“Our borders are absolutely out of control,” Ezell told the $20-a-plate kickoff luncheon for the new group. He said “businessmen like you” had to take the initiative to solve the problem of illegal immigration. “You must express yourself. Tell your elected officials how you feel. Let them know that you care about how they vote. You have to get involved.”

Stressing the “alarmingly high” apprehensions of illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexican border and lack of federal laws to punish employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, Ezell said: “What does it take to get the message across to Congress? People like you.”

The regional commissioner has been on the speaker’s circuit and has spoken before many Latino and business groups and service clubs. His host yesterday was an organization spawned with the help of the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, FAIR.

Americans for Border Control supports more INS funding and a stronger and larger Border Patrol. It supports “strictly regulated” guest worker programs to help farmers, and it endorses legislation by U.S. Rep. Peter Rodino (D-New Jersey) that would make it illegal to hire an illegal immigrant.

Not a ‘Ku Klux Klan’

“We’re not associated with the Ku Klux Klan or any other subversive group. We’re not your Clint Eastwood kind of organization,” said Bill Butler, a professional fund-raiser from Orange and the new organization’s president.

He said Americans for Border Control believes that Congress should immediately establish a moratorium on legal immigration “to shock” the United States into coming to grips with its immigration problem.

Butler and about 20 other Orange County businessmen recently got a firsthand view of border activities during a tour led by Border Patrol officers.

“Until you see the problem, you can’t imagine how bad it is,” Butler said of the group’s inspection tour.

The organization has three officers: Thomas Steele, vice president and a co-owner of Creative Communications Associates in Orange; Stephen Fleishman, an attorney from Beverly Hills, and Butler, president of Christian Resource Management in Orange. It has a seven-member board composed of Southern California real estate and investment executives, including Phil Olson, the brother of former Rams football star Merlin Olson.

Butler said the group is seeking $50,000 in donations to pay for a mailer to 100,000 California homes to seek support. It will ask members to circulate petitions at work, in their neighborhoods and at church. The petitions will be sent to politicians to stress support for strict immigration laws.

30,000 Members Nationwide

Roger Conner, FAIR’s executive director in Washington, said that although Americans for Border Control was not affiliated with FAIR, a national organization with about 30,000 members, he did visit and help the founders at a recent conference in Los Angeles.

“They seem to be very nice people with a track record of putting organizations together,” Conner said. “Our view is, the more the merrier.”

Ed Pyeatt, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in San Diego, said he was impressed by the caliber of questions the new organization’s members posed during their March 1 tour of U.S-Mexican border areas.

“They certainly are well-informed people, and they didn’t sound like any fringe group, either. Their questions were as good as news reporters ask. They were looking for the truth for themselves about border conditions before they went forward.”

According to a brochure, the new organization is concerned about the “appalling legacy” that will be left for the country’s younger generations if immigration reform fails.