A Semblance of Order : Border Patrol Chief in San Diego Doesn’t Expect to Halt Illegal Immigration--but He Has Tried to Control It

When Gustavo De la Vina arrived in San Diego a year ago, he was no stranger to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands: Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, De la Vina had logged time during four decades in such outposts 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 counter protests, 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,” De la Vina drawled as he accompanied a visitor along the battered border fence. “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 Border Patrol agent in the 800-officer San Diego sector, one of the most high-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.

To control it, he assumed command of a force that, while championed by some, has been reviled by many who question whether it should even exist.

One year later, the illegal mass emigration from Mexico continues unabated.

But De la Vina insists that the border 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, he says, there is now a semblance of order.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to stop it,” De la Vina says of the illegal migration as he walks along the border fence just north of Tijuana. “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 dispute.

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

Statistics indicate, however, that crimes against border-crossers, usually committed by thieves, appear to have dropped. There were no recorded murders in the San Diego border strip during the first six months of this year, compared 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.

There also has been a significant reduction in the number of immigrant pedestrians struck and killed along Interstate 5--a hub of smuggling activity that has long been a deathtrap for border jumpers. Six people were run down and killed along the freeway between January and June of this year, compared 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.

But many attribute the drop more to a range of non-enforcement factors--notably an increased awareness of the danger among motorists and immigrants--than with any Border Patrol efforts.

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

While publicly backing his troops, the new chief agent (who earns about $65,000 annually) also has attempted to signal, publicly, 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 an El Salvadoran woman.

“We’re just not seeing the volume of incidents that we saw last year,” says De la Vina, who traces much of the previous 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 drew trouble, he maintains.

As part of his strategy, De la Vina acknowledges that he forced taco salesmen and other vendors who traditionally have 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.”

Despite the seeming accomplishments, many detractors and supporters alike say there’s little he can do to reduce illegal immigration, given its massive scope and deep-seated social and economic roots. And experts agree that the Border Patrol remains woefully ill-equipped.

“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 levels have remained stagnant for five years, despite congressional vows to increase staffing by 50%. “But I would say the jury is still out as far as his (De la Vina’s) effectiveness is concerned.”

His lieutenants disagree. “He’s the most progressive and pro-active chief we’ve had in 15 years,” says Ray Ortega, acting agent in charge at the patrol’s Imperial Beach station, the sector’s busiest. “He likes to do things,” Ortega says, 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 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 raised by his mother, herself a schoolteacher, 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.

“This has been going on for many years, and it’ll probably keep going on for many years,” De la Vina says 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.”

De la Vina already has altered the border dynamic. Stadium-type lighting now illuminates a mile-long swath of the Tia Juana River levee; more than 100 miles of new and improved dirt roads are designed to improve access for patrol vehicles; and about four miles of border fence have been rebuilt with surplus military landing mat.

“We want to have this up and down the border,” De la Vina says 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 blowtorches to gouge out sections. But such feats require considerably more effort that breaching the notoriously porous chain-link structure that preceded it.

The new chief also has redeployed resources and used overtime payments to concentrate personnel at the most heavily utilized crossing zone. 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.

The current strategy, De la Vina says, is to concentrate agent strength in a way that forces the border-jumpers to attempt entry via 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 ‘em 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.”