Congressmen Assail Border Patrol Arrest Tactics

California congressmen and immigration-rights advocates Wednesday accused Border Patrol agents of brutality and “repressive force” in apprehending illegal aliens, particularly in an area near San Diego that has the nation’s highest traffic in illegal immigration.

But representatives of the San Diego Border Patrol testified that they are victimized by rock-throwing aliens and gun-toting bandits and are grossly understaffed and outnumbered.

Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego), a frequent critic of U.S. immigration policy, did not seem convinced by the agents’ testimony at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on human rights.

“The use of repressive force and violence that we see now is completely inappropriate and must be stopped,” said Bates, who called for the creation of a Border Patrol reserve made up of citizens “to bring a less military, more civilian perspective.”

Bates cited a study by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker humanitarian group, which claimed to document the deaths of 20 illegal aliens nationwide at the hands of the Border Patrol in the past year. The study also claimed 380 cases of human rights violations nationwide between May, 1988, and May, 1989, including cases ranging from shootings to verbal abuse.

Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Duke Austin said in an interview that both the death and human-rights violations numbers were inflated. He said the criticism comes from groups who believe “any attempt to enforce our immigration laws has been an abuse. They see the apprehension of aliens as abuse, the detainment of aliens as abuse.

“In every one of those shooting incidents (involving the Border Patrol), it has been established that (those shot) were armed bandits. They have to be,” Austin said. “We don’t draw a weapon unless there is an armed threat to an agent or a bystander.”

Both sides agreed on one issue: the level of violence has escalated.

The subcommittee is considering ways to curb the violence, particularly along a 12-mile stretch near San Diego where, on an average day, 1,200 undocumented workers are caught trying to enter the United States.

The sector accounted for 43% of all undocumented workers caught and deported by the Border Patrol, the INS’s uniformed enforcement arm. And 60% of the illegal drugs seized by the patrol came from the sector, Austin said.

“We need more people desperately,” testified Steven Garcia, president of Local 1613 of the American Federation of Government Employees. The 700 agents of the San Diego Border Patrol Sector, which Garcia represents, police San Diego County and parts of Riverside and Orange counties.

James R. Dorcy, a 14-year veteran of the Border Patrol and former president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the border “has become a zone of extreme violence,” much of which he attributed to the robbers who victimize would-be border crossers.

“These same predators who have no compunction against murdering, maiming, raping or robbing their fellow countrymen (often) set up ambushes to attack agents on patrol,” Dorcy said.

One immigration-rights official discounted that assessment, contending that Border Patrol agents “have shot more people than the bandits have.”

Roberto Martinez, director of the U.S.-Mexico Border Program for the American Friends Service Committee, testified that he regularly witnesses the injuries that captured illegals sustain at the hands of INS officials.

“I’ve had several guys come into my office in the past few weeks with their heads split open by flashlights, billy clubs,” Martinez said. “Why? Why can’t they just arrest ‘em, handcuff ‘em? Why do they have to add that extra kick here, hit there?”

Asked about the testimony, Austin countered that Border Patrol agents were the target of 164 assaults last year and 125 assaults in the past six months.

Agents “have to use special shields to keep the windows from being stoned out of them nightly,” he added.

However, Reps. Bates, Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) and Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente) challenged that view.

Levine described “a virtually hidden war being waged on the California border, with accounts of brutality and even murder of innocent men, women and, most tragically, young children.”

Torres decried “the blatant disregard of law and order, human life and dignity” along the United States’ 1,952-mile border with Mexico.

Bates added that he believes “elements of racism” underlie growing tensions and violence.