A Commanding View of No-Man’s-Land

When Gustavo de la Vina arrived in San Diego a year ago, he was no stranger to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands: Born and reared in the Rio Grande Valley, De la Vina had logged time during four decades in storied Texas frontier outposts such as Brownsville, Eagle Pass and El Paso.

But, he says, nothing prepared him for the anarchic spectacle--the nightly mass gatherings of hundreds of would-be immigrants, the volatile demonstrations and counterprotests, the carnage in isolated canyons and along well-traveled freeways--that greeted him along the border strip in San Diego.

“I was shocked when I first came up here,” the gravel-voiced De la Vina drawls, chain-smoking menthol cigarettes as he accompanies a visitor along the battered border fence now reconstructed with surplus military landing mat. “There appeared to be a total disregard for law enforcement.”

De la Vina, a third-generation Texan with a disarmingly folksy style, arrived in June, 1990, to assume the post of chief U.S. Border Patrol agent in the 800-officer San Diego sector, one of the highest-profile positions in the U.S. immigration bureaucracy.

He faced a daunting--some say, futile--task: policing the busiest and most notorious illicit-crossing zone along the 1,900-mile-long U.S.-Mexico frontier. It’s a no-man’s-land that many say had spiraled into a sinkhole of disorder, violence and racial tensions.

De la Vina assumed command of the force, that, although championed by many, has long been reviled by others who question its very existence.

One year later, the illicit mass emigration from Mexico continues unabated, if not at a faster clip.

But De la Vina insists that the border, despite its continuing atmosphere of chaos, is a much-improved place--safer for lawmen and immigrants, less subject to dangerously large buildups of northbound crossers and more responsive to law

enforcement pressures. Appearances aside, De la Vina says there is now a semblance of order.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to stop it,” De la Vina said of the illegal migration, as he walks along the border fence just north of Tijuana. He strolls beneath the bemused gaze of would-be border-jumpers curious about this presence in blue blazer and black cowboy boots, who heads an agency-- la migra-- that is their constant antagonist . “What we’re trying to do is control it as much as we can and cut down on the violence.”

Whether he has succeeded is a matter of considerable dispute. “We’re seeing too many cases of Border Patrol abuse to say there have been any real changes under De la Vina,” said Roberto Martinez, a longtime Border Patrol adversary who represents the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker social action group.

However, statistics indicate that banditry against border-crossers, usually committed by thieves, appears to have dropped off significantly. There were no recorded murders in the San Diego border strip during the first six months of this year, contrasted with seven in the corresponding period of 1990. De la Vina credits improved coordination between the Border Patrol and police from Tijuana and San Diego, along with the installation of high-powered lights at the border.

Meanwhile, there has been a significant reduction in immigrant pedestrians struck and killed along Interstate 5--a hub of smuggling activity that has also long been a deathtrap for border-jumpers. Six people were run down and killed along the freeway from January through June of this year, contrasted with 19 during the corresponding period of 1990. De la Vina largely credits a Border Patrol strategy aimed at denying migrants access to the freeway.

However, many say the drop in the death toll may have more to do with a range of non-enforcement factors--notably an increase in awareness of the danger among motorists and immigrants--than with any Border Patrol efforts.

Shootings by agents, another serious source of concern, appear to have diminished. As of last week, San Diego-based Border Patrol agents had shot no one since a fatal shooting last November, contrasted with five such shootings, three of them fatal, in the 12 months preceding November.

Although publicly backing his troops, the new chief agent (who earns about $65,000 annually) also has attempted to publicly signal his determination to punish those who err: He dismissed one officer who struck a handcuffed suspect earlier this year, and he imposed a monthlong, no-pay suspension on another who fired his pistol into a van full of immigrants, seriously injuring a Mexican teen-ager and a Salvadoran woman.

“We’re just not seeing the volume of incidents that we saw last year,” said De la Vina, who traces much of the former border violence to the unfettered massing of huge groups of would-be immigrants just inside the U.S. line, a practice that the new chief has ordered his agents to break up. Such groups caused trouble, he maintains.

“We’re not conceding any territory,” De la Vina said, repeating a boilerplate Border Patrol maxim.

As part of his strategy, De la Vina acknowledges that he forced taco salesmen and other vendors who have traditionally catered to the migrant trade on the north side of the fence to relocate south--much to their annoyance. “It used to be a carnival out here. . . . If they want to congregate south of the fence, that’s fine. That’s where we want ‘em.”

To no one’s surprise, the crowds and entrepreneurs have done just that, opting to mass together nightly on the Tijuana side.

Perhaps adding to the de-escalated atmosphere at the border is the absence of the large-scale, so-called Light Up the Border protests, in which demonstrators shone their headlights toward Mexico in symbolic opposition to illegal immigration. Critics accused the group and other spinoff organizations of provoking anti-Latino sentiment. Enthusiasm for the mass rallies appears to have diminished.

Even De la Vina’s critics acknowledge his apparent simpatico nature, his roll-up-my-sleeves casualness and easy accessibility. The chief has been known to come down to the “line” and put in a few hours of hands-on border duty.

However, many detractors and supporters alike say there’s little he can do to reduce illegal immigration, given the massive scope of the phenomenon and its deep-seated social and economic roots. And experts agree that the Border Patrol remains woefully understaffed and ill-equipped. (“A national disgrace,” is how former regional Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Ben Davidian characterized the patrol’s battered vehicular fleet.)

“You can give a person all the praise you want, and tell them, ‘Go out and get ‘em, tiger,’ but if you don’t give them the equipment and people to do it with, the morale is going to be pretty low,” said T.J. Bonner, a San Diego-based agent who is president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union. Bonner noted that patrol staffing has remained stagnant for five years, despite congressional vows to increase manpower by 50%. “But I would say the jury is still out as far as his (De la Vina’s) effectiveness is concerned.”

Not so, say his lieutenants. “He’s the most progressive and pro-active chief we’ve had in 15 years,” said Ray Ortega, acting agent in charge at the patrol’s Imperial Beach station, the sector’s busiest. “He likes to do things,” Ortega explained, expressing confidence that the chief will approve his latest suggestion: to purchase mountain bikes for agents working rough terrain.

De la Vina, a divorced father of four, arrived in San Diego from El Paso, where he had served as deputy chief patrol agent for six years. He had previously completed a four-year stint as head of the Border Patrol Training Academy in Georgia. He joined the Border Patrol in 1970 after a seven-year career as an elementary school physical education teacher in his hometown of Edinburg, Tex., where he and his brother were reared by his mother, herself a teacher, after their father died when they were infants.

In his year on the West Coast, De la Vina makes no claim to have hindered the inexorable flow of illegal immigrants who crisscross the border zone’s paths each day. (Of Mexican ancestry himself, De la Vina, who is fluent in Spanish, describes the vast majority of those arrested here as “good people” seeking better lives.)

“This has been going on for many years, and it will probably keep going on for many years,” De la Vina said of the movement of humanity, gesturing toward a group waiting just south of the boundary. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to stop it. They’re looking for jobs, and we’re giving them jobs.”

Indeed, men and women gathered at the nearby fence literally break into laughter at the notion that la migra might deter them by allocating more agents, or erecting better fences, or deploying more aircraft and vehicles.

“We’re all looking for our future--that’s why we go north,” Alejandro, 35, en route to Los Angeles, says as he and others wait for nightfall near a downed stretch of border fence. “They can put 10,000 walls and ditches, and we’ll still come. . . . Tell the boss of la migra that we’ll give him $50 each to let us through!”

Although De la Vina’s actions may never hold back Alejandro and others, the chief agent already has altered the border dynamic: Stadium-type lighting he has championed now illuminates a mile-long swath of the Tijuana River levee each evening, making the place safer for agents and migrants, the chief says; more than 100 miles of new and improved dirt roads have been plowed in the border strip by National Guard and Marine Corps work crews, improving access for patrol vehicles; about 4 miles of border fence were reconstructed with surplus military landing mat.

“We want to have this up and down the border,” De la Vina said of the new fencing material, which, he acknowledges, is not foolproof. Smugglers and migrants have already learned to tunnel under it, and use hacksaws and blow torches to gouge out sections. But such feats require considerably more effort than breaching the notoriously porous former chain-link structure that preceded it.

“We’ve got plenty of it, and we’re going to use it,” De la Vina said of the perforated landing slats.

The new chief also has redeployed resources and used overtime payments to concentrate personnel at the most heavily utilized crossing zone--the 5.5-mile strip to the west of the legal port of entry at San Ysidro. That has led to increased apprehensions: San Diego based agents recorded almost 250,000 arrests during the first six months of the current fiscal year, nearing the record levels of five years ago.

Yet, on a recent evening, when hundreds of would-be crossers were gathering on the Tijuana side, only 18 agents were on duty along the entire 5.5-mile stretch--an indication of the patrol’s perennial staffing shortage.

“It’s a question of manpower, and right now we just don’t have it,” said Bonner, the president of the agents’ union. At times, Bonner says, the patrol cannot muster enough agents to intercept groups of 100 or more illegals headed north.

The current strategy, De la Vina says, is to concentrate agent strength in a way that forces the border-jumpers to attempt entry through the rugged terrain to the far east or west of downtown San Ysidro, the San Diego border community where new arrivals can quickly find hiding places and transportation north. The idea is to push the arriving groups into zones where they must hike through open country, thus improving agents’ chances of catching them.

“We want to get them as far away from the city as we possibly can,” De la Vina said. “The farther away they are, the better our chances of controlling them.”

Queried about the border’s future, De la Vina voiced little hope that the human traffic headed north will abate anytime soon. He’s not particularly optimistic that the proposed free-trade agreement between Mexico and the United States will create sufficient employment south of the border to make a significant dent in the lure of the north.

“We’re apprehending close to 2,000 people a night--that means a lot of jobs will have to be created in Mexico,” De la Vina said near the end of a long evening. “Yes, Mexico has problems. It’s going to take a bigger mind than mine to figure out what the answer is. All we’re trying to do is control this as best we can. Just doing a job here.”