2 I-5 Dead Were on Way to Join Husbands

Two women pedestrians who were struck by a car and killed late Christmas Eve near the border checkpoint in Camp Pendleton were cousins from rural Mexico heading to reunions with their husbands in the United States, Mexican authorities and relatives said Thursday.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials said the checkpoint was not even in operation when the two illegal immigrants, apparently attempting to evade inspection by hiking around the facility, exposed themselves to the fast-moving traffic along Interstate 5. The pair probably believed that Border Patrol agents were stopping vehicles at the checkpoint, said Ben Davidian, Los Angeles-based regional commissioner for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“All we can figure is that somebody dropped them off not realizing that it was closed,” said Davidian, who explained that the checkpoint was closed because of holiday staffing reductions.

Smugglers and family members in vehicles routinely drop off undocumented immigrants south of the checkpoint and make arrangements to meet them again north of the facility once their passengers have trekked around the site.

The two, who were struck by a car near midnight Dec. 24, were the 14th and 15th immigrant pedestrians to be hit and killed this year along the hazardous 8-mile stretch of freeway near the checkpoint. The death toll surpasses last year’s record of 14 in that area.

One of the Christmas Eve victims, Maria del Carmen Valdez Hidalgo, 15, had just been married a few weeks ago in Mexico and was planning to join her husband, Leonardo Lopez, a Mexican citizen and legal U.S. resident who was waiting for her in the Los Angeles area, according to relatives and the Mexican consul general’s office in San Diego.

In fact, one friend said that Lopez had accompanied the two woman from their home state of Michoacan, in the Mexican interior, to Tijuana, before he proceeded across the border legally. The husband hoped to rendezvous with the two later in Los Angeles, said the friend, who was only identified as Alejandro during a telephone interview.

When the two women did not show up, the friend said, he and the frantic husband spent Christmas Day in Tijuana searching for his bride and her cousin.

“We looked in jails and everywhere else, but we couldn’t find her,” Alejandro said.

Family members were alerted to the deaths through news reports in the Spanish-language radio and press.

“When we first saw the names, we hoped it wasn’t them, since the names are very common,” said Antonio Hernandez Lopez, a Corona resident who is married to a cousin of one of the dead women.

The other victim, Elva Valdes Lopez, 37, also planned to meet her husband, Gonzalo Bravo, according to the Mexican consul general in San Diego.

Both spouses work in Florida, said relatives contacted in the Los Angeles area. The wives apparently intended to move there to be with their husbands.

Both women were natives of a rural community near the city of Huetamo, about 125 miles southwest of Mexico City, relatives said.

Meanwhile, immigration officials said the latest tragedy underscored the need for the erection of a controversial barrier along the median of I-5 near the checkpoint.

“It is another glaring example of why we need a safety fence built as quickly as possible,” said Davidian of INS, who, along with other proponents, maintains that the barrier will deter immigrants from crossing the freeway, thus reducing deaths and injuries.

But others have questioned that assumption, reasoning that immigrants will simply walk around the planned fence, cut holes in the barrier or traverse it via gaps that are planned for emergency use. Moreover, critics have expressed fears that the structure could worsen the problem by trapping exhausted and frightened pedestrians in the median of the busy roadway.

“We truly believe that it (the fence) will make it riskier,” said Claudia Smith, regional counsel in Oceanside for California Rural Legal Aid, an immigrant advocacy group.

Nonetheless, the California Department of Transportation last week announced plans to build a 8-to-10 foot fence along the hazardous 8-mile stretch of I-5 near the checkpoint. The fence is expected to be in place within two years, officials said.

The Christmas Eve deaths were the first along the freeway near the checkpoint in almost three months, since a 51-year-old Mexican man was struck and killed Sept. 27.

The California Highway Patrol says most of the accidents occur when the Border Patrol checkpoint is in operation. But a significant minority--about 17%--of the 65 persons hit since 1987 were struck when the checkpoint was unstaffed, the CHP said. Forty of those 65 have died.

The Border Patrol often shuts down checkpoint operations without notice because of staffing shortages, bad weather or heavy traffic.