New Wave at Border? : INS Girds for Influx of Central Americans

U.S. border authorities said Wednesday that they are bracing for a surge of undocumented Central Americans attempting to enter California from Mexico in coming months.

Officials of thS. Immigration and Naturalization Service expressed the fear that increased enforcement along the border in Texas, the crossing point most traveled by Central Americans, may bring about a shift to California.

They acknowledged that there is no strong evidence yet of such a shift, but they said enforcement is being bolstered in the expectation that more Central Americans may converge on San Diego.

The pronouncements come at a time when the number of Central Americans entering California from Mexico appears to be increasing, although that movement predates the crackdown begun last month against undocumented Central Americans arriving in Texas. For the past decade or more, large numbers of Central Americans fleeing poverty and warfare have traveled through Mexico to the U. S. border.

Preferred Point

South Texas, geographically closer to Central America, has long been a preferred U. S. entry point for many from those countries, particularly Nicaraguans. But many Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans have for years opted to enter the United States via San Diego, which is much closer to the booming undocumented job markets of the Los Angeles area. Authorities now

fear the increased vigilance in Texas may swell the ranks of illegal newcomers coming through San Diego.

“If we see these Central Americans at the border, we’re going to be ready for them,” Harold W. Ezell, the INS’ western regional commissioner, said at a news conference at the Otay Mesa border crossing here.

Authorities announced only one substantive step: More agents of the Border Patrol, an enforcement arm of the INS, will be posted directly at the international boundary separating San Diego and Tijuana. Officials say that an unspecified number of officers will be reassigned to the “line” from other duties, and that 45 agents recently sent to South Texas because of the influx of Central Americans there will be reassigned to the California border.

“We’re really going to be beefing up operations down there,” said Dale Cozart, chief Border Patrol agent in San Diego.

San Diego is the base of about 850 Border Patrol officers, the largest such contingent in the nation. A 10-mile stretch of international border here is considered the most popular area for illegal crossers from Mexico, accounting for more than one-third of all arrests of illegal aliens along the entire 1,952-mile border. However, more than 95% of illegal aliens arrested in San Diego are Mexican nationals.

Although arrests of undocumented Mexican citizens in San Diego have been steadily declining for more than a year--a drop authorities ascribe in large part to the large numbers of Mexican nationals who received amnesty and are now legal--apprehensions of Central Americans in San Diego have been on the increase.

Debate on Enforcement

During the first three months of 1989, for instance, arrests of undocumented people not from Mexico, mostly Central Americans, rose about 15%, to 3,700. During the same period, apprehensions of undocumented Mexicans dropped dramatically, by almost half, to about 75,700, contrasted with the same period last year.

There is considerable dispute whether more enforcement will be successful in deterring illegal immigration. “No number of new agents will deter the movement of Central Americans escaping warfare,” predicted Haydee Sanchez, a paralegal with El Rescate, the Los Angeles social service firm that works with undocumented immigrants. Sanchez said word of the intensified enforcement in Texas had already spread to El Salvador, prompting some immigrants to seek to enter the United States via California and Arizona.

If necessary, authorities said, they are prepared to seek more incarceration space for Central Americans arrested in San Diego and bring in more personnel to handle applications for political asylum, which are frequently filed by Central Americans living in the United States without papers. In order to qualify for asylum in the United States, applicants must demonstrate a probability of political persecution if they return to their native lands.

U. S. authorities have rejected the great majority of asylum claims by Central Americans, contending that the applications are “frivolous” claims put forward by economic rather than political refugees. Critics have charged that the process itself is highly politicized, noting that applicants from leftist governments such as the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua are more likely to be granted asylum than applicants from nations such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, whose leaders are not hostile to the United States.

Tired of the War

The increased volume of Central Americans destined for the border in California has been noticeable in Tijuana, where many stay for days or weeks before proceeding across the border. The Casa de Migrante, a church-run shelter in Tijuana, experienced an increase of more than 50% in the numbers of Salvadorans and Guatemalans who stayed there during the first two months of 1989 over the same period last year, said Father Roberto Simionato, shelter director.

“Most of them are refugees from the fighting,” said Father Simionato.

Among those at the shelter on a recent evening were three Nicaraguans, Asuncion Valladares, 36, who said she had worked as a bookkeeper in Nicaragua, her son, Hernan Ochoa, 16, and her brother-in-law, Gustavo Arjenal, 27, an architectural draftsman. All three said they had tired of the warfare and economic deprivation in their native land and were headed to Los Angeles. Their status as professionals is indicative of the many middle-class Central Americans who are now fleeing Central America, joining the ranks of poorer countrymen who left before them.

“I don’t want my son to be killed in the Army,” said Valladares, during an interview at the shelter courtyard. She noted that her boy would soon be required to fight in the Nicaraguan armed forces.

“I want to study; I don’t want to fight,” added her son.

The three described themselves as political moderates, opposed to both the Sandinista government and the rebels allied with the United States. All three said they fear political reprisals if they return to Nicaragua.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, attorneys for hundreds of Central American immigrants being held in a south Texas detention camp accused immigration officials Wednesday of violating a court order that guaranteed legal protections for Salvadoran refugees seeking political asylum.

The attorneys appeared before U. S. District Judge David V. Kenyon, seeking a temporary restraining order requiring that immigrants from war-torn El Salvador have access to legal counsel and be advised of their right to apply for asylum. Kenyon did not issue such an order, but said he may hold hearings in the Rio Grande Valley to determine whether the Immigration and Naturalization Service is complying with a similar injunction issued in 1982.

A new INS policy stepping up processing of applications for asylum in south Texas has resulted in the detention of thousands of immigrants, whose applications have been denied, near Port Isabel.

Lawyers for a coalition of immigrants’ rights groups said Wednesday that the stepped-up enforcement has so crowded the detention camp that many immigrants now face deportation hearings without access to a lawyer.

Times staff writer Kim Murphy contributed to this report from Los Angeles.