Border Chief High on Compassion : Immigration: Mike Williams favors using troops to bar drug smugglers, but says aliens looking for jobs should be treated sympathetically.

For almost a quarter of a century, Mike Williams has wrestled with the paradoxes of the U.S.-Mexico border. It represents international commerce, escape for the destitute, a front line of the “war on drugs.”

Williams, a Border Patrol agent who learned Spanish from the would-be immigrants he turned away, is the agency’s new chief. He was appointed in January to oversee the policing of some 5,960 miles along the borders with both Canada and Mexico, a $263-million-a-year operation involving 3,800 agents in 22 districts.

Williams says that a good Border Patrol boss should know how to balance compassion for those looking for work in the United States against intolerance for drug runners, auto thieves, labor-smugglers and others who exploit the political boundary.

“I think that we don’t need to apologize because we want to control our borders,” Williams said in a recent interview as he finished moving to Washington from El Paso.

“I think we need to recognize the sensitivity of the reasons why people come, and we do, but I don’t think we need to say that we should not enforce laws.”

Williams also makes no apology for proposals that troops be deployed to help the Border Patrol intercept drug traffickers.

“I feel it is morally right to try to prevent this plague that’s attacking America,” he said.

Williams, of Gainesville, Fla., began his Border Patrol career in 1967, after a four-year stint with the Coast Guard. At his first post in Comstock, Tex., he learned the Indian tracking techniques the patrol uses to hunt down undocumented aliens. Often he would track them as far as 70 miles through rugged country.

He says he learned Spanish by talking with those he arrested and also developed an understanding of the hardships they endure.

“They come here to get jobs, to feed their families, to possibly increase their standard of living,” he said, “so they’re going to come here to try to improve their standard of living. The worst thing that can happen to them is they’ll get sent back to Mexico.

Williams demanded that his officers show empathy also when he headed the El Paso Border Patrol sector, said Gus de la Vina, now acting chief there.

“He taught the difference between dealing with a criminal vs. dealing with a person that is coming in who is not a criminal, but is violating an administrative law,” De la Vina says.

Jose Guadalupe Moreno, director of the El Paso Catholic Diocese Migrant and Refugee Services, praised the selection of a Border Patrol chief who professes to understand the plight of immigrants, but said he doubted that any law enforcement officer could be compassionate.

“Their job is to look for individuals who are here without documents,” Moreno said. “No matter how professional they should be, no matter what the policy, it still takes the individual to follow through, to act in a way that will not step all over people’s basic and human rights.”

Before coming to El Paso, the 45-year-old Williams headed the patrol’s office in Havre, Mont., and was deputy chief in San Diego, the largest Border Patrol sector.

Williams said he spends most of his free time with the patrol when he is not at home with his wife, Pat, and their three children.

He has long spoken eagerly of the fight for extra funds that lies ahead in Congress.

“It’s a challenge to me, and I’ve always rode to the sound of the guns,” he said. “I feel I can make a difference, that I can help these men and women that are out here on America’s front line doing their job.”

Williams has taken on Capitol Hill before.

In 1986, he criticized Congress for being slow to rewrite immigration laws. “We are losing control of the border,” he said then.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service believes the number of illegal border crossings rises each year, though the only statistics are on those intercepted.

And that number has dropped by half since the Immigration Reform and Control Act--the law Williams pushed for--was passed in 1986. It granted amnesty to about 3 million people who had lived in the country since 1982 and imposed sanctions on employers who hired undocumented workers.

In 1986, 1.6 million aliens were arrested; the total was 855,315 in 1989. Border Patrol officials figure that fewer arrests means that fewer people are trying to cross the border without papers.

Recently, however, arrests began to rise again. Agents say they believe they’ve gained control of the influx of Central Americans, but not of Mexicans.

Critics such as immigration attorney Linda Yanez, of Brownsville, say the recent figures prove that immigration reform is not working.

“The purpose of much of the legislation was to curb and control immigration, and it has not done that,” Yanez said. “It just created more laws to punish, and they don’t work. Obviously, we’re not addressing issues at their core.”

The Border Patrol is moving into yet another controversy as it takes on more drug-interdiction work.

In fiscal 1989, the Border Patrol made 5,441 seizures of contraband substances valued at $1.2 billion, up from 3,257 shipments, valued at $700 million, the year before.

Yanez is most concerned about the idea of using military units on the border. “I don’t think it solves any problem and sends the wrong message,” she said.

Williams said he welcomes the additional manpower.

“Because of the magnitude of this influx of drugs . . . we welcome any assistance we can get,” he said.