200 Protest Violence Against Migrants : Border: Coalition of U.S. and Mexican demonstrators meet in peaceful rally at international boundary to decry what they view as increasing incidents of ‘racist’ actions by U.S. authorities.

About 200 demonstrators, protesting what they view as escalating violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, took to the streets of San Diego and Tijuana Saturday before staging a joint rally at the fence marking the international boundary.

San Diego police, who were out in force to escort the demonstrators on the U.S. side, reported no incidents or arrests as 100 or so participants staged a peaceful protest in the San Ysidro neighborhood. Marchers walked about a mile down San Ysidro Boulevard to the border, waving signs and chanting slogans condemning what they called “racist” actions by U.S. authorities.

At the border fence, the San Diego activists joined with a related group from Tijuana and issued joint denunciations of U.S. policy, and at least one speaker condemned Washington’s “aggression” in the Mideast.

A large contingent of lawmen from the two nations monitored the protests, in part because of fears that participants might try to shut down the bustling port of entry at San Ysidro--the world’s busiest land border. But no effort was made to block border traffic and port operations continued as normal, officials said.

U.S. Border Patrol agents also watched the marchers closely, and, as they walked along San Ysidro streets, one agent appeared to be videotaping them from a nearby hillside.

The protests were timed to coincide with similar actions slated for other Mexican border cities, including one scheduled in Mexicali, across the border from Calexico, Calif., and another slated for Ciudad Juarez, which is opposite El Paso, Texas.

The protest--the latest of a series along the border--underlines the increasingly divisive nature of the national debate about illegal immigration, which often centers on San Diego, the prime entry point for undocumented immigrants from Mexico. During the past year, so-called “Light Up The Border” activists have staged protests praising the Border Patrol and urging enhanced enforcement--the opposite of the position taken by marchers yesterday.

Saturday’s borderwide actions were deliberately slated for Feb. 2, the date when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848. The treaty ended the Mexican War, but a humiliated Mexico was forced to give up much of its northern territory, including present-day California and much of the southwestern United States.

“I think it’s an indictment against the U.S. government that we’re still fighting for our rights, 143 years later,” said Roberto Martinez, a longtime border activist who works with a Quaker group.

Marchers cited a litany of recent alleged instances of abuse, including a much-publicized November case in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot a Mexicali teen-ager as he was positioned atop the border fence. Border Patrol officials say the agent shot the boy in self-defense as he was about to toss a rock at him. But the boy, who is recuperating, says he never brandished a stone and was shot without cause.

The marchers, led by rights organizations on both sides of the border, professed goals that seem difficult to obtain.

Among other things, protesters want the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, parent body of the Border Patrol, to disband. Marchers accused the agency of perpetrating widespread abuse against Latinos. Protesters also called for a so-called “open” border, which would allow almost unfettered access to job-seekers and others who want to go north. In addition, the marchers called for the resignation of Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller, whose office has consistently ruled that federal and city lawmen were justified in shooting cases.

Carlos Pelayo, one of the march organizers, said the INS “is only used as a tool of intimidation against our people.” Undocumented people will continue to breach the border, Pelayo said, because of the wide economic and political disparities between the United States and most Latin American nations, particularly Mexico, the principal home of most border-jumpers.