Border Officials Brace for Influx of Central Americans

U.S. border authorities said Wednesday that they expect greater numbers of undocumented Central Americans to attempt to enter into California from Mexico in the coming months.

Officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said that increased enforcement along the border in Texas, the usual crossing point for Central Americans, is likely to bring about a shift to California.

They acknowledged that there is no strong evidence to date of a significant shift of Central American traffic to the California border, but they said that enforcement is being bolstered in the expectation of more Central Americans converging on San Diego.

Apparent Increase

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 last decade or more, large numbers of Central Americans fleeing poverty and warfare have traveled through Mexico to the U.S. border.

South Texas, geographically closer to Central America, has long been the preferred U.S. entry point for many from those countries, particularly Nicaraguans. But a steady flow of 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 that 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, INS western regional commissioner, said at a news conference at the Otay Mesa border crossing here.

Authorities announced that 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 said an unspecified number of officers will be reassigned to the “line” from other duties, and that 45 agents recently assigned to South Texas because of the influx of Central Americans there would be reassigned to the border force in California.

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

There is considerable dispute whether the additional enforcement will be successful. “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.

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 program has so overcrowded the detention camp that many immigrants now face deportation hearings without access to a lawyer.