Steps Taken to Improve INS Checkpoint Safety : Immigrants: Signs have been posted and foliage cleared along I-5 as a result of pedestrian deaths near San Clemente. Caltrans and the INS are to discuss other measures.

Jose Aguilar stared at the small color photograph of his father and winced.

“If I only had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have told them to cross. He would still be alive today,” Aguilar said in an interview here Monday, two days after his 80-year-old father, Custodio Aguilar, was killed while trying to cross Interstate 5 to avoid the San Clemente immigration checkpoint in northern San Diego County.

“I should have continued forward with him in the car, even if immigration had spotted him and taken him from me, it would have been better than having him die,” Aguilar said.

The family had paid a smuggler to take Custodio Aguilar and two other relatives as far north as the Aliso Creek rest area, which is about five miles south of the checkpoint. From there, Jose, who is a legal resident, was to drive them north.

Fearful that the checkpoint was in operation, Jose Aguilar told his father and two other relatives to cross the eight-lane freeway while he made a U-turn to pick them up. The plan was to wait at a southbound rest area until the checkpoint closed. But Custodio Aguilar stumbled and was hit by a truck.

The strategy is not uncommon among immigrants, and Aguilar was the 12th to die this year while crossing the freeway near the checkpoint, and the 33rd since 1987. As a result, Caltrans officials have taken some steps to improve safety along the freeway near the checkpoint and were to meet today with the regional head of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to discuss other safety measures.

Ben Davidian, western regional commissioner for the INS, said he would like to see more lighting and signs around the checkpoint area to alert motorists and immigrants alike.

Several immigrant rights organizations, including the Orange County Coalition for Immigrant Rights & Responsibilities, have recommended that lighting be increased and speed limits be reduced in the area of the checkpoint. Also, they suggest that Caltrans insert perpendicular grooves in the roadway that would cause motorists to slow down.

Jose Aguilar said he agreed with the recommendations, but added a personal warning to other Mexican immigrants: “It’s better to drive right into the immigration checkpoint and risk getting caught than to have a tragedy like this happen to others.”

Angeles Aguilar, Jose’s 18-year-old daughter, said, “They should just get rid of the checkpoint.”

Jose Aguilar said his father had illegally entered the United States on previous occasions to visit him and other relatives in Palmdale. He was en route here with a niece, Patricia Palomino Pacheco, 18, and Ricardo Jimenez Lopez, 26, of Los Angeles.

On Monday, Palomino, still dazed and very emotional, recalled how the trio waited on the shoulder of the freeway for a break in traffic. Because of Aguilar’s age, he needed help walking.

“We had to almost carry him. He was walking very slowly and here was this big freeway in front of us,” Palomino said.

“I saw there was a lot of traffic so we waited. We saw the lights of the cars from far away and we thought it looked OK. But when we started, the lights, they just got closer really fast. I remember turning to help the older man and then looking back towards the traffic. We started across but by that time the lights were almost in front of us.”

“I stepped back but Custodio went ahead. He got hit by the truck,” she said.

Lopez suffered a broken leg and foot as he struggled to pull Aguilar to safety and was hit by the truck. He is recuperating at his home in Los Angeles.

The INS, U.S. Border Patrol, the California Highway Patrol, Caltrans and other agencies have been discussing the problem of freeway safety for about two years.

Davidian said one of the improvements he has discussed with Caltrans is a fence in the median about five miles north and south of the checkpoint to keep people from crossing the freeway. Lowering the speed limit from the posted 55 m.p.h. and increasing lighting around the checkpoint would alert drivers that that portion of the highway is unique and should be handled with caution, he said.

Davidian said the safety measures would not undermine efforts to stop illegal immigration. “Nothing I suggested would help the undocumented alien evade the checkpoint,” he said, noting that increased lighting would help Border Patrol agents as well as motorists and immigrants.

Last weekend Caltrans crews removed shrubs and debris along an eight-mile stretch surrounding the checkpoint to improve visibility for motorists and posted about six signs warning drivers they may see pedestrians on the freeway. Also, Caltrans produced about 10,000 flyers warning of the danger of freeway crossings that the Orange County Coalition for Immigrant Rights & Responsibilities distributed to community service centers, Caltrans spokesman Steve Saville said.

The signs caution northbound and southbound drivers on the outside of the eight-mile stretch of Interstate 5 between Los Pulgas and Basilone roads that they are “entering pedestrian accident area.” Closer to the checkpoint, yellow and black signs show a family holding hands and running, with the word caution .

But Robert Emry, associate dean of the School of Communications at Cal State Fullerton who is researching the highway problem for Caltrans, said signs are not the most effective safety device.

Emry said his research suggests tape-recorded Spanish messages, triggered by motion detectors, would keep pedestrians off the freeway. He also suggested handing out flyers, both here and in Mexico, educating schoolchildren, distributing prayer cards in Catholic churches and painting a mural on a large concrete spillway on the U.S. side of the border depicting the dangers of running across the freeway.

David Reyes reported from Palmdale and Lucy Chabot reported from Orange County.