INS Official--Private War on Illegal Aliens

Harold Ezell, regional commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, has played a key role in the formation of a new Orange-based group fighting illegal immigration from Mexico.

Although the group, called Americans for Border Patrol, makes no effort to publicize its ties to Ezell, most of its founding members are personal friends or church associates of the controversial INS official. Ezell, who has been trying to get such a group off the ground for more than a year, was instrumental in organizing the group and selecting its board of directors, he and several of its members said.

“Hal has certainly provided the inspiration for this,” said board member Stephen Fleishman, a Beverly Hills attorney. “His vocalization of the problem has produced an awareness; he’s piqued an interest in it nationwide.”

Other board members, most of whom know Ezell through an Irvine church, said he asked them to serve as directors after giving them a nighttime tour of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Several Latino community leaders, when told of Ezell’s role in the formation of the group, called it inappropriate and divisive.

“It’s conduct unbecoming a high-level official,” said Amin David, president of Los Amigos, an Orange County immigrant rights group. “It is above and beyond what one would perceive his role as immigration commissioner to be. This (group) is going to do a lot of damage to the serenity of the community; he is promoting fear, and solutions based on fear are unworkable.”

Earlier this year, David and other Latino leaders called for Ezell’s resignation because of what they termed his “xenophobic rhetoric.”

Ezell’s involvement violates no agency policy, said a spokesman for INS Commissioner Alan Nelson in Washington. And Ezell has said he would not serve as an officer or board member of the organization. “I don’t think there is any problem,” said Ezell, who spoke to the group at its $20-a-plate kickoff luncheon in Costa Mesa last month.

“From early on in my appointment, I felt the same kind of grass-roots impact . . . that the women got with MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) was needed to bring the problem of illegal immigration to the attention of the nation,” he said. “I will continue to speak out on the need for the silent majority to get involved.”

Named INS Western regional commissioner in 1983, Ezell has become the immigration service’s most visible figure, leading his agents on raids, conducting tours of the border for politicians and others and crisscrossing his territory with a single, dark message: The numbers of illegal aliens crossing the border constitute an invasion that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year and slowly destroying American society.

“We arrested 64,000 illegal aliens last month at the San Diego border crossing alone,” Ezell said. “They cost us hundreds of millions of dollars in medical, judicial and general relief. Those are non-reimbursable costs. Every American needs to be part of the solution.” About a year ago, Ezell said, he discussed the need for a citizens group with Roger Conner, president of FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), a Washington-based lobbying and policy-oriented organization.

“I told him that I feel there is a need for a grass-roots movement. . . . FAIR is probably the best on the national scene, but what is there outside?” Ezell asked. “I asked him if he would give direction if some guys became excited about this kind of thing, and he said he’d be glad to.”

Lack of Leadership

Conner, contacted in Washington, said FAIR had encouraged the formation of Americans for Border Control, which “might be the only group of its kind in the country.” Other attempts at forming citizen groups for immigration reform have been short-lived, usually for lack of leadership, he said.

Americans for Border Control’s brochure sounds much like an Ezell luncheon speech: It warns of the “appalling legacy which will be left our children and grandchildren” in the absence of stricter immigration enforcement. It also says that “special interests . . . control policy at the national level” and have “a monopoly on the media.”

“We have to alert the citizenry to the size of the invasion,” said Bill Butler, president of Americans for Border Control. The group has 40 dues-paying members so far, and is just beginning to arrange speaking engagements and raise money for a direct-mail campaign, he said.

To stop the steady flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico, Ezell says, Congress must enact legislation that will beef up the Border Patrol and the INS and that will provide for sanctions against employers who hire illegal aliens. Americans for Border Control was created to pressure Congress to pass legislation sponsored by Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Peter Rodino (D-N.J.), which would accomplish both of those objectives, Butler said.

Woman Shocked

Sandy Arterburn, who knew Ezell when both were members of South Coast Community Church in Irvine, said she changed her mind about illegal immigration after Ezell gave her and several other prospective group members a tour of the border last year. Ezell lives in Laguna Hills.

“I was shocked,” said Arterburn, president of a Laguna Beach company that manufactures swimwear with the help of documented Cambodian refugees. “I used to think that everyone should be able to live in the United States. But it’s like war down there on the border. They run like crazy into our country, and then we run around trying to catch them. After we saw how bad it really was, we decided to form (Americans for Border Control) and Hal asked me to be on the board.”

Phil Olsen, who, like Ezell, was an elder at the church, said he had been interested in the immigration problem for some time when he asked Ezell if he could take the border tour. As was the case with Arterburn, the tour convinced Olsen, president of an Irvine real estate company and the brother of former Ram Merlin Olsen, that something had to be done.

“I asked him if there was something I could do, and he said, ‘Here’s an opportunity if you’d like to be involved,’ ” Olsen said.

Cross-Section Sought

Olsen said he had told the other board members that the group needs to be “a representative cross-section of society. We need women and Mexicans represented. We need to be able to say that there is no special-interest group here.”

Thomas Steele, vice president of Americans for Border Control, as co-owner of Creative Communications Associates in Orange, has helped Ezell’s wife, Lee, develop and produce a five-minute weekly Christian radio program, and has booked Harold Ezell “for a number of things,” he said.

Steele, who with Butler does most of the day-to-day work for the group, says Ezell’s involvement is not extensive. Other than supplying the group with information and the names of some prospective board members, “he’s been virtually no help at all,” he said.