Peace Activists Hope Plans to Patrol Along the Border Will Cut Violence : Immigration: Quakers, others announce proposal to have volunteers walk S.D.-Mexico border as observers. The Border Patrol is skeptical of the plan.

Drawing on a pacifist approach employed in Central America and other troubled regions, Quakers and allied activists unveiled plans Monday to attempt to reduce violence in the U.S.-Mexico border area by launching a voluntary, unarmed “peace patrol” along San Diego’s hazardous border strip.

Organizers deliberately inaugurated the so-called Patrulla de Paz (Peace Patrol) on the holiday commemorating the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who championed nonviolent approaches during his leadership of the U.S. civil rights movement.

The peace effort had been scheduled to go into effect before the outbreak of war in the Mideast, organizers said.

The aim of a peace patrol, activists say, is twofold: To reduce violence through the presence of neutral observers and, simultaneously, to raise awareness about border issues--thus generating debate and, possibly, nonviolent alternatives to the existing atmosphere of conflict.

The patrols, organizers said, should have an equally important symbolic importance as beacons of nonviolence in an area where conflict is so prevalent.

“We have to look for other solutions, rather than just sealing up the border and putting people on both sides in a very difficult situation,” said Edith Cole, a psychologist from Claremont in Los Angeles County, who has served on pacifist missions in El Salvador and Guatemala, two war-ravaged Central American nations.

The effort is the brainchild of Quaker organizers, although border-area rights groups are expected to participate, supporters said.

In their comments Monday, the Quaker activists generally avoided direct criticism of the Border Patrol and other U.S. and Mexican law enforcement bodies. Immigrant advocates have long accused police agencies from the two nations of perpetrating violence against migrants. The pacifists also acknowledged that they are offering no concrete solutions to improve life at the border, but they expressed the hope that their presence will lead to something positive.

“We feel what is going on here is deplorable, but we have a great deal of compassion for the Border Patrol,” said Barbara Bixby, one of the organizers. “We realize the Border Patrol has an impossible task,” she added during a news conference held atop the northern levee of the Tijuana River, perhaps 50 yards north of the international boundary.

Afterwards, the peace activists, who numbered about 10, walked along the border strip, familiarizing themselves with the terrain and observing illicit crossings and Border Patrol operations.

The border in San Diego is one of the world’s most-utilized illicit migratory corridors. Each day, officials say, thousands of undocumented immigrants enter U.S. territory from Mexico, mostly en route to family, jobs and new opportunities in the U.S. interior.

Border Patrol officials, for their part, expressed skepticism about the initiative’s prospective effectiveness.

“The majority of the violence is caused by border bandits and alien smugglers, and they will continue to ply their violence with or without onlookers,” said Ted Swofford, supervisory Border Patrol agent in San Diego.

However, Swofford vowed that officers will not disrupt the peace patrols as long as participants do not interfere with Border Patrol operations. In the past, Border Patrol agents have attempted to prevent U.S. journalists and others from getting access to some parts of the border strip. Authorities no longer take such restrictive action, said Swofford. The Border Patrol official did express concern for the participants’ safety.

“It’s a violent area, and I don’t think the bandits and others would hesitate for a moment to target them or anyone else,” Swofford said.

But the peace activists said they will undertake extensive precautions: Participants plan to walk in pairs and, initially, they only expect to go on “patrol” during the day, when there are many fewer people crossing, and the danger is considerably reduced.

“We have no intention of being conflictive in any way,” Bixby said. “We’re just witnesses, essentially.”

A key participant in the patrol will be Roberto Martinez, border representative in San Diego for the American Friends Service Committee, social action arm of the Quaker Church. Martinez has long been a critic of the Border Patrol.

At first, organizers said, volunteers, wearing Peace Patrol armbands and jacket patches, will probably only be deployed during the daytime, perhaps one or two days a week. The expectation is that other volunteers will join up and bolster the patrol.

“We’re hoping very much that it will grow,” Bixby said.

Although the program is new along the border, peace groups have in recent years deployed activist “witnesses” throughout embattled regions of Central America, often generating criticism from governments and the military.

The underlying theory, whether at the border or in a war zone, is identical: That the presence of neutral observers will help reduce abuses and contribute to the emergence of nonviolent alternatives.