The Circus Is in Town--Again

The most recent media circus produced by Harold Ezell, regional commissioner for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles, illustrates how utterly unfit he is to hold a sensitive and important public office.

On Wednesday Ezell oversaw a crackdown by INS agents on streetside locations where men gather to wait for employers to drive past and offer them day-labor jobs. Ezell said that the sweep was conducted at the request of Americans for Border Control, the group that several of his friends formed recently to promote public concern on immigration issues. About 20 of the group’s members were on hand early Wednesday morning, waving placards and cheering as the INS agents chased about 200 men along East Chapman Avenue in the city of Orange.

It made for a show, but not much else. Most of the 123 persons detained in the sweep did not resist arrest and agreed to voluntary deportation to the Mexican border at Tijuana. Most will likely return to the United States through that porous border just as easily.

In fact, Ezell’s highly publicized INS operations serve no constructive purpose. Bringing public attention to illegal immigration is hardly necessary in this area. By feeding the sense of fear in local immigrant communities, Ezell’s raids make illegals more vulnerable to exploitation. Some INS officers suggest that such media events hurt agency operations because they take agents away from investigations and other duties in order to chase suspected illegal aliens for television cameras.

Worst of all, Ezell’s media circuses encourage citizens to take an us-against-them attitude toward immigrants--a view totally unjustified by the facts. For while illegal aliens and other immigrants do cause problems in the Southland, they also bring the region many benefits, and any rational effort to control immigration must take that complex reality into account. Ezell’s antics notwithstanding, illegal immigration will not be stopped by police action.

Most immigration specialists, including career INS officers, are aware of this. So it is most unfortunate that President Reagan did not see fit to elevate a trained INS professional to head the regional office here, opting instead for a political appointee who owes his job to his friendship with U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and INS Commissioner Alan Nelson.

Meese and Nelson are obligated to fill sensitive government posts with people who can handle them with dignity. Los Angeles has a large immigrant community, and the INS commissioner here is a highly visible and important public figure. But in Ezell the President does not have a respected immigration spokesman in Los Angeles--only a two-bit ringmaster who ill serves him and the general public.