Understaffing Strains S.D. Border Patrol

Almost three years after Congress and the White House pledged a 50% increase in U.S. Border Patrol staffing as part of sweeping immigration reform, the number of agents in the San Diego area has plummeted to a four-year low, straining officers’ ability to deter the huge number of undocumented people who daily attempt to enter the United States from Tijuana.

That fact, officials say, has increased stress among officers and left supervisors scrambling to plug enforcement holes in San Diego, the most crucial corridor along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. It is estimated that almost half of all illegal entries into the United States are made through a 10-mile swath of frontier in San Diego, primarily because it leads to the booming immigrant job markets of Los Angeles.

At times, a lack of officers has prompted authorities to reduce inspections or shut down operations outright at the giant immigration checkpoint along Interstate 5 near San Clemente, which is considered one of the agency’s key enforcement tools. The checkpoint is operating at slightly more than half of its authorized officer strength, officials said.

Although Border Patrol staffing nationwide has risen about 16% in the last three years, to about 3,750 officers, the San Diego sector has dropped below 1986 levels, to 712 agents. Officials blame the decline on a yearlong hiring freeze, high attrition rates because of the cost of living in San Diego County and the fact that Congress has never come through with the funding for all the officers promised as part of immigration reform.

The Border Patrol staff decline here comes at a time when the agency has had an expanding roster of responsibilities nationwide, including increasing involvement in anti-drug-smuggling activities and the investigation of employers who illegally hire undocumented workers.

The manpower shortage, authorities say, has led supervisors in San Diego to rely increasingly on overtime and internal transfers in an effort to bolster trouble spots.

“Obviously, we need to bring more people on board,” said Miguel Vallina, assistant chief patrol agent in San Diego.

Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative Washington-based pressure group, called the decline in Border Patrol staffing in San Diego “a disaster,” adding, “It represents an erosion at the wrong time of many of the gains in improving immigration enforcement.”

A Border Patrol-wide hiring freeze has been in effect for almost a year because of federal budget constraints, preventing authorities from filling vacancies caused by transfer, retirement or other factors. Although the freeze has been felt nationwide, its impact has been particularly acute in San Diego, which loses more than 10% of its agents each year, one of the highest attrition rates in the service.

Ben Davidian, Western regional commissioner for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, parent body of the Border Patrol, said the lack of staff has probably heightened tensions among individual agents.

“Increased stress and tension come from understaffing,” said Davidian, who assumed his post in mid-August and has spent considerable time on the border since then. “Anyone who’s put into a situation like this, it’s understandable that the string gets pulled a little too tight. You pull it too tight, and it may snap.”

Specifically, Davidian said, he has “no doubt” that staff shortage-related stress may have contributed to an incident in August in which a patrol agent in San Diego directed amplified racial and sexual slurs at hundreds of undocumented people gathered along the border. The U.S. Justice Department says it is investigating the incident, which was witnessed by three American journalists.

“I don’t think there’s a more frustrating job on the planet than being a Border Patrol agent in the San Diego sector,” said Davidian, who said pushing for more agents is a top priority.

The staff shortages, agent Vallina said, have also sometimes forced the agency to cut back the number of agents posted directly along the border, or “line,” thus reducing the rate of apprehensions of illegal immigrants. Although INS officials in Washington have often cited the reduced arrest numbers as evidence that the 1986 law is deterring illegal entry, Vallina conceded that manpower deficiencies may also partly explain the decline.

“The number of arrests is going to be commensurate with the number of people on the line,” Vallina said. “We’re dealing with just about the same numbers of aliens coming across, we just don’t have many people on the line.”

During the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, agents along the U.S.-Mexico border recorded about 850,000 arrests of undocumented foreigners, a decrease of 9.3% from the previous year. It was the third consecutive year in which the number of apprehensions declined.

The 50% increase in Border Patrol staffing was one of three key elements of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The law’s two other principal sections--amnesty for some illegal immigrants and new penalties against employers who hire undocumented workers--have already been put into effect, with varying results.

In authorizing a huge increase in Border Patrol manpower, lawmakers reasoned that enhanced enforcement was a crucial part of any effort to stem the arrival of undocumented foreigners through the U.S.-Mexico border. The Border Patrol, which has been in existence since 1924, is often referred to as “the first line of defense” against illegal immigration.

Despite the authorized 50% increases, however, Congress never followed through with the required appropriations to finance additional hiring. And attrition has eaten away at early staff gains from a hiring splurge that followed passage of the immigration-reform package.

Since the law’s passage, observers say there has been little resolve in Washington to bolster the Border Patrol, especially during the current period of fiscal austerity.

“With something like that, either the Administration has to take an aggressive stance to gain the necessary funding, or, in lieu of that, the Congress has to push for it,” said one Washington official close to the issue who declined to be identified. “Neither one of those things happened.”

Exacerbating matters, officials say, is the Border Patrol’s traditional role as a kind of stepchild of the INS, as well as lack of concern among lawmakers who are not from one of the four border states--California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Not one border-state congressman sits on the House appropriations subcommittee that determines funding for the INS and other Justice Department branches, noted U.S. Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), who sits on another appropriations panel.

“For my colleagues from Iowa or Arkansas, this is not a do-or-die problem, so it’s tough to get their attention focused on the matter,” Lowery said.

Consequently, the Border Patrol and its supporters have lately been stressing the agency’s increasing involvement in the drug war, which has considerable bipartisan support nationwide. Although the U.S.-Mexico border has long been known as a principal conduit for the flow of illegal drugs, Border Patrol drug seizures have almost quadrupled in the last four years. Congress last year gave patrol agents additional legal authority to arrest drug suspects.

“The only headway we’re making is putting it (Border Patrol funding) in the context of the drug war,” Lowery said.

That may have had some effect. Senate and House conferees drafting a budget bill have approved $9 million to finance the hiring of 200 patrol agents next year. That awaits final approval, however.

The average number of officers in the San Diego sector was 724 in 1986, 760 in 1987 and 732 in 1988. In the 1989 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the average number of officers rose to 793. But now, because of heavy attrition and the hiring freeze, the number has dropped to 712, a level last seen in fiscal 1985.

Authorities trace the high attrition rate in San Diego to two factors: The high cost of living and the general frustration of being a patrol agent here, something embodied by the tableau that unfolds nightly along the Tijuana River levee in San Diego: A handful of agents attempts to deter thousands of undocumented border crossers, sometimes in groups of 100 or more.

A beginning Border Patrol officer earns a base salary of slightly more than $18,000 a year. (Starting San Diego police officers earn about $25,000.) The Border Patrol salary can be stretched a lot further in rural Texas, where many Border Patrol officers reside, than in the San Diego area. Consequently, many agents decide to transfer elsewhere in the force. Others jump to other law enforcement agencies.

Of almost 1,200 new Border Patrol officers hired in San Diego since 1985, fewer than half remain with the force.

However, despite the push for Border Patrol staff increases, some are skeptical that any number of agents will ever deter the tide of humanity that daily arrives at the border, fleeing poverty and political repression. “I think if they put Border Patrol agents shoulder to shoulder along the entire 2,000 miles of border, these people will still find a way to come to the United States,” said Roberto Martinez, a rights activist in San Diego.

Each evening, hundreds of people gather along the border in Tijuana and just inside U.S. territory, waiting for an opportunity to enter the United States without papers. Most are from Mexico, but many Central Americans are also among those massing in Tijuana, and undocumented border-crossers come from as far as China and Africa also come to Tijuana to gain quick access to the United States.