INS Chief Opposes Use of Military in Role on Border

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Commissioner Alan C. Nelson said Thursday that he is strongly opposed to any efforts to deploy military personnel along the U.S.-Mexico border, either to interdict drugs or to assist in curbing the flow of illegal aliens.

In comments in San Diego, Nelson criticized as “simplistic” and unworkable various suggestions that soldiers be posted along the notoriously porous, 1,952-mile border, which stretches from the Pacific Coast of California to the Gulf Coast of Texas and has long been an entry point for contraband--from bootleg liquor to exotic birds to, more recently, such drugs as cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

“If you put the military on the border, you’re creating a lot of problems and it’s going to cost a lot more,” said Nelson, whose comments echo those of other Reagan Administration officials, notably Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci.

There has been growing support in Congress for use of the military for drug interdiction.

Nelson cited legal restrictions on Pentagon involvement in law enforcement and the extensive training that would be needed to ready soldiers for border assignments. “There’s no free lunch,” said Nelson, who was in San Diego to address the annual convention of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., as well as the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies at UC San Diego.

However, Nelson, like Carlucci, did leave the door open for a larger military support presence at the border, providing equipment, training and other aid to the U.S. Border Patrol. The Border Patrol is a uniformed agency of the INS and the U.S. Department of Justice whose role in drug interdiction has been increasing, although its primary responsibility remains the prevention of illegal entries into the United States. The Pentagon has long provided aircraft, ground sensors, night-vision scopes and other assistance to the patrol, which now has about 3,100 agents nationwide, almost a third of them in San Diego.

Apart from arresting more than 1 million undocumented immigrants in the most recent fiscal year, Nelson noted, agents also confiscated about $600 million worth of illicit drugs, a figure that has been rising annually.