Border Patrol Safety Record Questioned in Van Injuries

Despite his wounds, despite his shock, Jose Ramirez Perez knows he’s fortunate. Sitting in a hospital room in San Diego, the bushy-haired 19-year-old farm worker recalled how his sleep was shattered near dawn on Sunday when he could have lost his life.

“At that moment, I felt death was very close,” said Ramirez, moving slowly and speaking softly, still clearly dazed by the incident that left him hospitalized. “I’m just so lucky to be alive.”

Ramirez was one of three undocumented immigrants injured shortly before daybreak Sunday when they were run over--accidentally, authorities say--by a U.S. Border Patrol van a short distance from the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ramirez was released from UC San Diego Medical Center Monday afternoon, after being treated for bruises on his legs and stomach. Alfonso Gonzalez, 23, remains at the hospital in serious condition; doctors had to remove his spleen. The third victim was treated Sunday and returned to Mexico.

The three were sleeping in the brush, Ramirez said, waiting for daybreak, when they planned to head north in search of farm labor jobs. Without warning, they awoke to the confused shock of tires, dust and screams.

“When you’re sleeping and jolted like that, it’s hard to know what is happening,” said Ramirez. “I heard my friend crying. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Police investigators have ruled that the incident was an accident. The Border Patrol officer involved, using his van’s lights in the pre-dawn darkness, was pursuing some other aliens and did not see Ramirez and his friends as they slept, according to authorities.

Nonetheless, the incident has revived an ongoing debate about the sometimes-controversial driving techniques of Border Patrol officers. This is the third time in the past two months that agency vehicles have struck Mexicans seeking to enter the United States illegally through San Diego County; two earlier victims died. Authorities said all three incidents were accidental.

“I am alarmed by the frequency with which these incidents have occurred of late,” said Javier Escobar, Mexico’s consul general in San Diego, who said on Monday that his office plans to investigate the latest incident.

“It shows a complete disregard for human life,” charged David Valladolid, a member of an umbrella group known as the Law and Justice Coalition of San Diego. The group, which says it is composed of 25 organizations and individuals, monitors alleged rights abuses along the border.

Border Patrol officials say they’re doing the best they can, but they assert that such traffic mishaps are almost inevitable, no matter how cautious patrol officers are. Authorities cite the ever-increasing traffic of illegal aliens in the brush country, back roads and paths of southern San Diego County, where agency vehicles patrol regularly in search of undocumented immigrants.

“We stress safety, both to our officers and to others,” said Ed Pyeatt, a Border Patrol spokesman. “I think we have a tremendous safety record.”

On Monday, police said there was no apparent connection between the accident and the discovery shortly thereafter of the body of a Mexican man, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run driver. His body was found at about 6 a.m. Sunday--less than an hour after the earlier incident--at a spot fewer than 500 yards from where the three men were run over. The victim was identified as Gabriel Hernandez Lozano, 49.

Authorities believe he had been dead for several hours before he was found. The investigation into his death is continuing, said Sgt. Ralph Priem, San Diego Police chief of traffic investigations.

Upon his release from the hospital Monday, Ramirez was placed in the custody of the Broder Patrol, which plans to send him back to Mexico. Ramirez is one of eight children of a laborer in a shoe factory in Leon, Mexico, more than 1,000 miles to the south. Ramirez said he was penniless and didn’t know how he would get back home from Tijuana.

Still, he said he would worry about that later. Just now, he was grappling with the confusion of a survivor, still trying to understand his luck.

“If we had been sleeping in a different position,” Ramirez said, “(the van) would have ran over our heads.”