INS Chief Seeks More S.D. Border Agents

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Gene McNary is seeking to increase U.S. Border Patrol staffing in San Diego by about 18%, to 1,000 agents, possibly by the end of this year, his chief spokesman said Thursday.

If the proposed 1,000-agent mark is reached by the end of this year, 1990 will represent the year in which the agency in San Diego received its largest staff increases ever. The steep increase would follow a yearlong, 1989 hiring freeze that left the patrol undermanned.

The staff expansions are specifically targeted at undermanned San Diego--the busiest illicit crossing along the almost 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border--and do not represent increases nationwide, said Verne Jervis, spokesman for INS commissioner McNary.

“This is the key problem area . . . and he (McNary) intends to put as much of the additional strength here as possible,” said Jervis, who along with McNary visited the San Diego-Tijuana border area this week

The INS is the parent body of the Border Patrol, an armed enforcement body that now includes about 3,700 agents nationwide, mostly posted along the U.S.-Mexico border. Patrol officers are often referred to as the “first line of defense” against illegal immigration.

However, some experts say that any number of officers would be unable to deter the mass migration of people fleeing economic deprivation and political instability.

“More agents are not going to stop anyone,” said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, who heads an immigration study institute in Tijuana. “The problem doesn’t start at the border. . . . To stop the problem, you have to attack the social, economic and political problems that provoke immigration. But Washington has never shown the will to do this.”

Perez Canchola and others say the deployment of more border guards will probably provoke increased violence and heightened tensions in the already volatile border zone. Shootings and other confrontations involving agents, migrants, thieves and others are commonplace in the strip of no-man’s-land along the border.

U.S. officials blame border thugs for most of the violence. Authorities acknowledge that poverty and warfare propel illegal immigration, but they argue that patrol agents are nonetheless an effective deterrent.

“Right now, we reach a point during several times of the day and night when every vehicle in the field is full, every agent is holding as many people as they possibly can, and, if more people come, there’s no one to catch them,” said Ted A. Swofford, Border Patrol spokesman in San Diego.

Patrol agents in San Diego are now recording more than 1,500 arrests of illegal immigrants each day.

The San Diego area, which leads directly to the thriving immigrant job markets of Orange and Los Angeles counties, annually accounts for more than one-third of all arrests border-wide of undocumented immigrants. Such apprehensions have been increasing sharply, fanning fears that illegal immigration may again be rising after a perceived lull that followed passage of the 1986 immigration reform legislation.

In the past six months, agents based in San Diego reported about 215,000 arrests of undocumented immigrants, an increase of more than 50% over the corresponding period in 1988-89.

The 1986 law also called for a 50% increase nationwide in Border Patrol staffing, but Congress never provided funds for the buildup, which was considered a critical component in reducing illegal immigration.

For months, U.S. immigration authorities have conceded that the San Diego area was understaffed, leaving border agents little chance to turn back all of the undocumented immigrants who attempt to enter the United States daily from Tijuana. By the beginning of this year, the hiring freeze had left San Diego with about 700 agents, the fewest posted here in more than four years. Morale was said to have plummeted.

The San Diego Border Patrol sector suffered more from the freeze than other patrol offices, authorities said, because it traditionally has one of the highest turnover rates--10% or more. The turnover is largely traceable to the area’s high cost of living and the difficult working conditions associated with the zone, where there is little respite for overmatched agents.

The INS hiring freeze was lifted in January. Since then, McNary has signaled his intention to bolster border manpower.

About 850 agents are now assigned to San Diego, including 150 recent hires who are now undergoing the Border Patrol’s 18-week training course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center near Brunswick, Ga. The first of those 150 new recruits should be on duty in San Diego by May, officials say.