Second Front a Challenge to Migrants

Dawn is still a faint glow to the east, but already the day’s activity is beginning to take shape on roadways, parking lots and in the open chaparral of Oceanside and North San Diego County.

At the Aliso Creek rest area along Interstate 5, fidgety young smugglers banter about the business as they gather in the morning chill around a bank of pay telephones, waiting for word from scouts in the north.

In the Santa Fe freight yard, men with fatigue in their eyes crouch in the bushes with the expectation of hopping onto a northbound boxcar.

And, in safe houses, shopping centers and clumps of brush from the beach eastward to Escondido, hopeful groups of undocumented people await word on their transport.

“A busy morning,” Border Patrol Agent T.C. Rasmusson says later as he slaps handcuffs on a group of six men arrested while waiting inside a yellow Ford Pinto in the parking lot of a Lucky convenience store in Oceanside. “This is our fifth load of the day.”

Eloisa Vaca Tellez, a 26-year-old mother of five from Mexico City en route to Glendale, was among those recently disappointed. “I wish they would let me pass,” she said with tears in her eyes as she was taken into custody in a separate incident along Las Pulgas Road. “I was almost there. Bad luck.”

It’s just another daybreak along the second border, the corridor of North San Diego County through which hundreds of undocumented people--perhaps thousands, no one really knows for sure--pass daily en route to the Los Angeles area.

While more than 40 miles north of the actual U.S.-Mexico boundary line, the zone stands as a crucial second barrier to the tide of undocumented humanity seeking entry into the U.S. interior.

U.S. authorities concentrate the majority of their enforcement efforts on the border, or “line,” but it it is clear that the undermanned Border Patrol is fighting a losing battle at that notoriously permeable boundary.

With such a huge volume of people eluding the porous border enforcement net, U.S. immigration authorities readily acknowledge that the North County area represents a kind of last opportunity. The Border Patrol’s San Onofre checkpoint on Interstate 5 at the north end of Camp Pendleton is the key weapon, as most undocumented travelers head north in vehicles, often with smugglers. (The current price: about $300 for a Tijuana-Los Angeles trip.)

Enforcement slacks off dramatically north of the checkpoint, reducing the odds that anyone will be caught.

The checkpoint itself resembles a kind of second border. It is situated along the only major road traversing Camp Pendleton, a vast buffer of open land between the rapidly expanding communities of North San Diego County and the densely populated grid of Orange County.

“Once they get past here and into Orange County, they’re practically home free,” said Ted Hampton, assistant patrol agent in charge of the El Cajon Border Patrol station, which shares responsibility for the agents based at the San Onofre checkpoint. “We kind of act like linebackers up here, trying to catch the ones that got by the border.”

He spoke as he headed north along Interstate 5 in his patrol car, seeking smugglers’ vehicles. Vans and late-model American sedans are among those favored by the so-called coyotes. Agents look at suspect vehicles for tell-tale clues: A low rear-end may mean that there are people riding in the back or trunk; fogged windows are another indication of multiple passengers; a nervous driver may have something to hide.

“I’ve seen everything from two people stuffed in the trunk of a Volkswagen beetle, to 137 in the back of a tractor-trailer,” said Ted A. Swofford, supervisory Border Patrol agent in San Diego.

It is a constant thrust-and-parry of tactics and counter-tactics against the army of smugglers, who observe U.S. immigration strategies closely and constantly seek to exploit weak points.

The daily drama is most concentrated in and around the city of Oceanside, which, along with the San Diego border neighborhood of San Ysidro, ranks as a current-day smugglers’ alley, through which an endless stream of human contraband flows, day and night, by whatever means possible--on foot, in cars, trucks, buses and trains.

Oceanside’s neighborhoods host numerous “safe houses,” or “drop houses,” where “loads” of immigrants are staged--crammed into single rooms and converted garages--until ready for the trip north. The thick brush alongside parking lots is also widely utilized to stash people in anticipation of the trip.

Most area residents are oblivious to the immense movement of humanity, viewing the nearby checkpoint as an eternal inconvenience.

For the undocumented traffic, however, the checkpoint ranks as a formidable barrier. While many smuggling vehicles undoubtedly make it through the checkpoint without being inspected, there is always a risk.

The wiser course, many reason, is to wait until the checkpoint closes down. Because of safety concerns and a limited staff, the facility shuts down frequently, notably on Sunday afternoons, when the traffic is heavy.

This schedule has created an endless waiting game: Smugglers stage in the Aliso Creek rest area, as well as in parking lots throughout Oceanside, biding their time until the checkpoint closes.

The smuggling industry here, as elsewhere, is a sophisticated one. Federal authorities say that “scout” vehicles, usually driven by legal U.S. residents, constantly cruise through the checkpoint to determine if it is operating or not. If the “point” is shut down, the scouts quickly telephone confederates waiting at public telephone booths, such as those in the rest area. The drivers then quickly gather their loads and head north.

“These guys are on the phone all the time,” notes Pat Callahan, a supervisory Border Patrol agent who works the area. “They’re real smart.”

Among those gathered near the bank of telephones at the rest stop on a recent morning was a man who gave his name as Enrique Salazar, a Mexican citizen who is a legal U.S. resident. He explained that he was merely taking a break before returning to Los Angeles after a weekend spent visiting relatives in Tijuana.

“The migra (U.S. immigration authorities) should be happy all these people are crossing the border,” Salazar said as he and a friend leaned on his beat-up 1976 Ford Thunderbird sedan, shortly after he was questioned by Border Patrol agents. “Let’s face it, these migra guys would be out of work if it weren’t for all these people crossing.”

The brush inside the rest area and on Camp Pendleton property is a favorite hiding spot for the undocumented loads waiting to be transported north. Drivers, many of whom gained legal status through the amnesty program, typically wait by their vehicles and alert the waiting pollos, (chickens), as they are known, that the coast is clear to head north.

“This is just a big game,” said a man who gave his name as Salvador Arellano, who was waiting by the rest area fence on a recent morning, looking out for U.S. immigration vehicles. “Maybe la migra gets one of us, but a hundred of us go through.”

Privately, U.S. Border Patrol complain that some foreigners newly legalized under the amnesty program are now in the smuggling business, their status providing them with a measure of protection. “They know we can’t do a thing to them,” said one agent. “They’re brazen. The law has tied our hands.”

For those who are caught in the Oceanside area, the disappointment is often great. Many have spent all night negotiating the often-difficult and dangerous border terrain; they had successfully reached the final major hurdle before their destinations.

“We were almost there,” one exhausted Mexican man said recently, bemoaning his bad luck after he and his wife, who was four months pregrant, were arrested on Camp Pendleton property. Most will try to return in a day or two, after being sent back to Tijuana.

The cat-and-mouse game at the checkpoint can be a dangerous one. If the station is unexpectedly open, it is not unusual for smugglers to abandon their vehicles along the median before the checkpoint and simply run for the hills, along with their loads--”bailouts,” is how U.S. authorities refer to such people.

Some smugglers have been known to jump out while their vehicles were still in motion, posing severe dangers for their passengers.

Many illegal border-crossers seek to walk around the checkpoint, hoping to rendezvous with smuggling vehicles at sites farther north. (Others, unable to afford rides, attempt to to walk all the way, following the beach or the railroad tracks north.) The hike around the checkpoint, often involving several crossings of the high-speed freeway, can be a perilous one.

Since 1988, 20 undocumented pedestrians have been struck by vehicles and killed while crossing I-5 directly south and north of the checkpoint, according to the California Highway Patrol. (During the same period, 59 were killed after being struck by vehicles in the grid of freeways that converge along the border area.)

Among the victims of the pedestrian carnage along I-5 in North San Diego County were Celsa de Jesus Perez Gomez, 24, and her 3-month-old daughter, Blanca, who were killed early in the morning of Oct. 1 at a site about a 1 1/2 miles north of Las Pulgas Road. They were hit while en route to the Santa Ana home of her husband, Felipe Martin Sales Castro.

“She didn’t know the dangers,” said a cousin, Natividad Najera, 32. “She just wanted to be with her family.”

Trains and buses are another preferred means of transport. U.S. immigration agents regularly check the Amtrak and Greyhound bus depots in Oceanside, along with other local bus stops. In an attempt to avoid detection, many undocumented people, tickets in hand, attempt to board the Amtrak at the last moment, hopefully avoiding the watchful eyes of la migra.

Freight trains provide yet another route north. U.S. immigration agents often conduct sweeps on the Barstow-bound trains that pull in almost nightly to the Santa Fe yard in Oceanside.

Once the agents are spotted in the early-morning darkness, the resulting scene is one of complete pandemonium: scores of people jump off trains, often while the cars are still moving, and charge out into the busy yard, local streets and the adjoining Camp Pendleton property. U.S. agents take off in hot pursuit.

“I came north for the adventure,” said Pablo Rodriguez, an 18-year-old from the Mexican state of Puebla who ran off the freight train on a recent morning and spoke while hiding beneath a truck on a nearby lot in Oceanside. “Four of us came up together. There’s no work there, so we thought we’d try the north.”

This train trip, too, can be a hazardous one. Last March 7, after a U.S. immigration sweep, Mario Rodriguez Ramirez of Mexico City attempted to board a northbound boxcar as it was leaving the Santa Fe yard in Oceanside. The 21-year-old could not hold on and fell beneath the train’s last car.

The metal wheels severed both legs. Paramedics attempted to revive Rodriguez, but, 35 minutes after the accident, he died in the freight yard. The crew of the 64-car train, unaware of the carnage, continued northward.