CHP Targets Drivers Who Peril Migrants

Concerned about the scores of illegal immigrants who traverse San Diego County freeways on foot, the California Highway Patrol soon will begin targeting speeders near Border Patrol checkpoints on Interstate 5--writing more traffic tickets in an attempt to save lives.

Beginning in October, CHP officials plan to use the bulk of a $530,000 federal grant to pay overtime for additional units near the San Ysidro and San Onofre checkpoints, John Marinez, a CHP spokesman, said.

The grant will also pay for a $40,000 public-information campaign--posters and radio and television ads--aimed at drivers and pedestrians on both sides of the border.

Last year, 17 people were killed and 19 injured as they tried to cross the freeway near the San Ysidro border crossing, and 15 died along a stretch of Interstate 5 north of Oceanside near the San Onofre checkpoint.

This year, six people have died near the San Ysidro crossing, but none has been struck at the northern checkpoint.

Marinez acknowledged that the new CHP program could be controversial. He said he has heard critics deride other programs that expend resources to protect illegal immigrants.

“But we’re talking about human lives here, whether they’re here illegally or not,” he said, calling such critics “off track.” “Our goal is to preserve human lives.”

The federal grant is the latest in a series of efforts to make the freeways safer. In July, for example, four of eight lanes were closed along Interstate 5 near the border. Portable lights have also been tried.

In addition, the California Department of Transportation has run radio spots and distributed printed material to warn motorists and immigrants about the dangers, Roberto Martinez, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S. Mexico Border Program, said.

Martinez welcomed the CHP’s crackdown on speeders, noting that the driver who killed a child recently near the San Ysidro checkpoint allegedly was driving about 90 m.p.h.

Martinez noted that, because many illegal immigrants would have trouble outrunning even drivers who observe the speed limit, the real impact of issuing more tickets is that slower drivers will have an easier time braking for pedestrians.

“Most of (those who make a run for it) are women and children. They couldn’t outrun somebody going 40 m.p.h.,” Martinez said. “But the slower (drivers) are going, the more chance they have of stopping.”

Muriel Watson, founder of Light Up the Border, said she supports a program targeting speeders.

“I drive those freeways too, and I’m putting along at the speed limit, and I feel like a turtle,” she said.

But Watson said she would also like to see the illegal immigrants punished for the dangers they pose by dashing through traffic.

“There’s a certain thing called equality of enforcement. You can’t put pressure on the drivers and then let those people who are in fact intimidating those same drivers alone. It has to be a dual program.”