U.S. to Add 300 Agents Along Mexican Border : Immigration: A major INS expansion will deal with a surge in illegal entries, delays in assisting newcomers.

Faced with a surge in illegal immigrants and delays in assisting immigrants, Atty. Gen. William P. Barr will announce today a major expansion of the Immigration and Naturalization Service that includes hiring 300 agents to help patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.

Justice Department officials said the $100-million-plus initiative also will include 200 investigators mainly assigned to pursue immigrants suspected of crimes, particularly gang members, establishment of a National Criminal Alien Tracking Center and the use of surplus Pentagon equipment ranging from helicopters and land vehicles to field meals.

In addition, the program will add 240 airport inspectors, 100 information officers to help reduce long lines at INS offices, 100 employees to work with refugee and asylum applicants and 250 temporary workers to help reduce immigration backlogs.

The 300 new Border Patrol agents will be stationed in California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, with the largest number in California, department officials said. The U.S.-Mexico border now has about 2,500 agents, with roughly 800 assigned to the San Diego sector.

Barr, who is in Southern California for a border inspection and a meeting with law enforcement officials, among other activities, is expected to provide more details of the program during a stop in San Diego today.

An early draft of the announcement quotes Barr as saying the expansion will seek to “strengthen enforcement against illegal immigration and violent crime by illegal aliens” and to improve “service in the area of lawful immigration.”

A Justice Department official said the expansion will affect “everything INS does.” He said the purpose is “to add integrity to the whole system.”

Major parts of the expansion will be financed with money from INS fines, from criminal asset forfeiture funds and through the closer scrutiny of immigration user and examination fee accounts to make sure the money there is used to pay for services, officials said.

The Bush Administration’s fiscal 1993 budget would boost INS spending by $120.8 million, to $1.07 billion, and include 200 more Border Patrol agents. But the expansion plans to be announced today would be put into effect this year and be in addition to requests made in next year’s budget.

The Justice Department will be required to ask Congress to reprogram INS funds to pay for part of the expansion, but it will not seek more money from legislators, department officials said. The INS is part of the Justice Department.

Funding the expansion without seeking additional money is in line with Barr’s effort to comb the budget for ways to shift funds that are no longer needed into higher-priority areas. Previous moves have included reassigning FBI counterspy agents to violent-crime and health-fraud squads, and moving Drug Enforcement Administration agents from administrative posts to street assignments.

The new expansion program also will involve reissuing counterfeit-resistant green cards for immigrant workers and redesigned employment authorization documents, and stepping up enforcement of sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

Last year, the INS attempted to toughen enforcement of the employer sanctions, but critics said the effort had limited impact because of the proliferation of fraudulent documents. The new green cards and authorization papers will be an attempt to combat that problem, officials said.

Fifty of the new investigators will be assigned to enforcement of employer sanctions. The other 150 will be sent to new INS violent-gang task forces or assigned to existing task forces to pursue law-breaking immigrants. Cities that will receive the largest number of these investigators include Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Seattle, Houston, Dallas, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, Boston and Albuquerque, N.M., officials said.

The National Criminal Alien Tracking Center will include computerized records available 24 hours a day to assist state and local law enforcement officials, as well as INS agents, in identifying and tracking suspects.

In the year ended last Sept. 30, the number of illegal immigrants arrested throughout the nation reached its highest point in four years, topping 1.1 million. This was still below the record 1.6 million arrested in 1986, just before enactment of the sweeping immigration reforms intended to curtail illegal immigration by imposing fines on employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers.

The majority of arrests last year occurred along the U.S.-Mexico border, where slightly fewer than 1.1 million illegal immigrants were apprehended. Of those, about half were caught in the 66 miles covered by the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector.

In December, apprehensions along the entire border--from the Pacific Ocean to Brownsville, Tex.--climbed to 64,485 from 62,411 in December, 1990, an INS spokesman said. There was an even greater increase in January, particularly in the San Diego sector, which accounts for nearly half of all apprehensions.

A Justice Department official cautioned against concluding that the increased number of apprehensions signaled a like increase in the number of attempts to cross the border illegally. He noted that fencing had been constructed along seven miles of the San Diego sector and that Border Patrol enforcement already had been intensified.

Justice Department officials emphasized Saturday that the new expansion has been in the planning stages since soon after Barr was confirmed last year as attorney general.

The immigration fee accounts that will help fund the expansion include charges that international travelers pay when entering the country through airports and seaports, while the examination fees are charged to those applying for refugee status, business visas and other applications, a Justice Department official explained.

Audits of those accounts indicated that they had balances, but showed that some of the immigration and examination costs actually were being covered by other INS resources, the official said. He added that Congress intended those funds to be self-sustaining.

Closer monitoring of those accounts is expected to yield $9.3 million this fiscal year, and an even greater amount in fiscal 1993, an official estimated.