Marines Protest Planned Border Checkpoint

Camp Pendleton, expressing concerns that military training would be disrupted, has urged the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service not to build a $36-million, 16-lane Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 at Las Pulgas Road on the western side of the base.

Instead, the base command wants the INS to build the checkpoint 2.3 miles farther north at I-5 and Horno Canyon, a request that has prompted the INS to begin evaluating the alternative site.

“We’ve got some people taking a look at the site to see if there’d be increased cost,” Duke Austin, spokesman for the INS in Washington, said Tuesday.

He said the base’s objection to the Las Pulgas Road location, where construction was scheduled to begin in 1993, surprised the INS.

“At one time,” Austin said, “we were only focused on Pulgas . . . then the Marine Corps came back to us and said, ‘We’ve got a problem.’ ”

The Marines are concerned that building the checkpoint at Las Pulgas Road, which would replace a four-lane checkpoint at I-5 near San Onofre, would interfere with aircraft and ground training.

The interstate cuts through the west side of the huge base, where 36,000 Marines are stationed.

Lt. Col. Clifford O. Myers III, the base community planning liaison officer, said an area used extensively as a takeoff and landing location for AV-8 Harrier aircraft “would be rendered unusable (by) the construction of the proposed Border Patrol checkpoint.”

Myers, in a statement released by Camp Pendleton, said base officials have searched for another site for the aircraft but “we have been unable to locate an area suitable for the requisite 6,000 feet of hard surface areas to support AV-8 training requirements.”

He also mentioned that Las Pulgas Road is near an important freeway underpass that Marines use to drive tanks and other tracked combat vehicles to and from the beach, where amphibious landings and other maneuvers are practiced.

“Any impact on the concrete underpass . . . could have deleterious effects on the training mission of this command,” Myers said. “This underpass is the only access route that crosses the Santa Fe Railroad north of the Las Pulgas Gate that will allow passage of tracked vehicles.”

A letter outlining Camp Pendleton’s objections to the planned checkpoint was sent to INS officials in August, but only came to light this week.