2nd Latino Youth Is Killed on I-5 in Less Than a Day : Checkpoint: Human rights group wants San Clemente station eliminated. Caltrans official says ‘very radical’ changes are in the offing.

Stunned by the second freeway death of a Latino child within 24 hours, human rights activists Thursday called for removal of the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 as state officials pondered “radical” steps to reduce risks for illegal immigrants.

Late Wednesday night, a Latino youth, believed to be a teen-ager, was struck and killed in the southbound lanes about two miles south of the San Clemente checkpoint. Authorities said he and a group of other Latinos were crossing from east to west. The boy remained unidentified Thursday.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Constantino Loreto Marin, 8, of Acapulco was killed by a car as he dashed across the freeway to avoid detection by federal officers. Marin and his family, believed to be illegal immigrants, were on their way to visit relatives in Anaheim, the family said.

“I’m getting to the point where we should eliminate the checkpoint altogether,” said Roberto Martinez of the American Friends Services Committee, a human rights group in San Diego. “Every life is important and precious. If this checkpoint is creating more problems, we should move it somewhere else.”

Despite continuous meetings with Caltrans, California Highway Patrol officials and other immigrant groups, Martinez said, the number of pedestrian fatalities has increased near the Border Patrol station about five miles south of San Clemente.

“This Since 1987, at least 33 pedestrians have been killed near the Border Patrol substation, known as the “second border.” All are believed to have been illegal immigrants who were trying to cross Interstate 5 after being dropped off in the median by smugglers. For the same period, 83 immigrants have died on freeways within five miles of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Border Patrol spokesman Ted A. Swofford in San Diego said closing the San Clemente checkpoint is not feasible and that the risks can be substantially reduced by a host of proposals, some of which are already in place.

“The checkpoint is a vital part of our operation, and I don’t think closing it is an option,” Swofford said. “It’s not the checkpoint at fault. It’s the smugglers.”

Because they rarely encounter high-speed freeway traffic, Martinez said, illegal immigrants can easily misjudge oncoming cars as they try to cross four lanes, many times in the dead of night.

“They don’t have any concept of the freeway,” Martinez said. “Many of them are from rural areas and they don’t realize the speeds. Can you imagine their terror when they have to run across it?”

The California Department of Transportation, stung by criticism that it has not done enough to reduce the carnage, is considering a number of responses, including reducing the 55 m.p.h. speed limit in areas where immigrants have been hit.

“When we look at all the things that we’ve done so far, the fact is that the fatalities keep mounting, so obviously we haven’t been very effective,” said James L. Larson, a Caltrans spokesman. “We’re ready to do some things that are very non-traditional and very radical.”

Among the options, Larson said, is the reduction of speed limits along freeways in the two principal trouble zones--the immediate border area in San Diego and a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 5 north of Oceanside--and the construction of a barrier in the median along the freeway north of Oceanside.

A barrier in the center divider theoretically could deter pedestrians from crossing the roadway, but undocumented immigrants have proved adept at surmounting a wide range of physical obstacles in the border area.

As for a reduced speed limit, Larson said its effectiveness depends on the California Highway Patrol, which may not have enough officers to enforce it. Larson added that a reduced speed limit and other ideas are in the discussion stage.

Caltrans has already installed small warning signs and lights on parts of the freeways. It is in the process of installing huge overhead signs warning drivers of the potential presence of pedestrians on Interstate 5 as well as Interstate 805 in the immediate vicinity of the border next to Tijuana. However, those signs will not be in operation until January.

But Claudia Smith, regional counsel in Oceanside for California Rural Legal Aid, which provides legal help to immigrants, said the state agency had been “dragging its feet” in response to an urgent problem.

“Someone’s got to move on this,” Smith said Thursday. “There’s no way to eliminate the problem, but we’ve got to do everything we can to reduce it.”