Pickup Truck Fleeing INS Hits Car, Woman Injured

A woman was injured Tuesday when a pickup loaded with suspected illegal aliens bolted from the San Onofre border checkpoint and led authorities on a 10-minute chase that ended when the truck rammed the woman’s car.

San Clemente officials voiced frustration over repeated Border Patrol chases along city streets and Interstate 5, which runs up the spine of the rolling beach community.

“I said all along that this was a time bomb waiting to happen,” Councilman Brian Rice said. “I got my phone ringing off the hook. This has always been my greatest fear. There is no justification for the pursuit.”

But immigration officials defended the episode, saying Border Patrol agents and local police officers responded with caution.

Ted Swofford, an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman, said the agents at the checkpoint have little power to stop the rising number of vehicles that speed past agents who wave them to a stop.

Swofford said that in the past year, the INS has been involved in 187 chases of suspected illegal aliens who have fled during routine stops at the San Onofre checkpoint. Four or five of those chases have resulted in injuries, none of them fatal, he said.

“It is very problematic,” Swofford said.

The chase began about 8:20 a.m. Tuesday morning when, according to authorities, a 1984 Isuzu pickup driven by Cisco I. Hernandez, 18, a Mexican national, ignored an order to stop at the manned checkpoint on I-5.

After leading the Border Patrol north on I-5 and onto San Clemente streets, the truck smashed into the driver’s side of a car driven by Linda Delaine Chaffee, 42, of San Juan Capistrano, who was taking her 7-year-old son to school.

Chaffee was treated at Samaritan Medical Center for an eye injury and released. Her two sons who were in the car were not injured, authorities said.

Hernandez also escaped injury, but four occupants of the truck, all of them believed to be illegal immigrants, were treated for minor injuries at the hospital. They were identified only as two men, a woman and a 2-year-old girl.

Authorities said the truck had been stolen in Chula Vista. Hernandez faces federal charges of fleeing from a Border Patrol officer and entering the country illegally, Swofford said. He also faces state charges of reckless driving and auto theft, San Clemente police Sgt. Richard Downing said.

Correspondent Frank Messina contributed to this story.