Chased Migrant Falls to Death at Checkpoint

A Mexican man died Sunday night, and two companions were seriously injured after they ran from Border Patrol agents and fell 50 feet off a cliff near darkened San Onofre State Beach.

Hugo Cisneros Ramirez, 20, became the fifth person this year to die near the checkpoint, on Camp Pendleton south of San Clemente.

His death raised the ire of migrant advocates, who accused the Border Patrol of using dangerous tactics in apprehending illegal immigrants.

But the Border Patrol blamed a smuggler who dropped the men off and ordered them to run across the freeway into dark, hilly terrain in order to circumvent the immigration checkpoint.

The smuggling suspect, 42-year-old Sebastian Eustacio Juarez Santander of Los Angeles, was arrested and might face additional charges because of the death and injuries, Border Patrol spokesman Steve Kean said.

“We have to drive the point home to these smugglers that they have to act responsibly, even if the activity they are engaged in is illegal,” Kean said. “They have to understand that these people are at their mercy.”

Juarez had dropped off Cisneros and four other illegal immigrants on the side of northbound Interstate 5, about a half mile south of the checkpoint, Kean said. Follow

ing a practice commonly used by smugglers, Kean said, the immigrants were supposed to cross the freeway to the west side, walk north past the checkpoint, then recross to the east side. The smuggler would drive through the checkpoint and pick them up again, Kean said.

Agents manning the checkpoint saw the men about 9:30 p.m. running across the freeway south of them, Kean said. Another driver then told them that the immigrants had been dropped off from Juarez’s pickup truck.

The agents detained Juarez, and two other agents were dispatched to intercept the group, but when Cisneros and the others saw the vehicle’s headlights, they split up, two heading into the brush and the others running west toward the beach.

An agent using night goggles spotted the pair in the brush and guided other patrol agents to their hiding place, Kean said.

Five to 10 minutes later, after arresting the two and putting them in a vehicle, the patrol agents went to find Cisneros and the other two, he said.

“They ran off the cliffside while our agents were apprehending the people in the brush,” Kean said. “Our agents did not pursue these people off the cliff. Our agents are very aware of the inherent dangers to these people getting smuggled, and that’s why they went for the people that hid in the brush.”

The agents found the three severely injured men about 150 yards west, at the bottom of a 50-foot cliff on the beach, Kean said.

Cisneros died at the scene at 10:16 p.m., half an hour after the fall occurred, said Brenda Cummings, an investigator for the San Diego County medical examiner.

Guadalupe Diaz, 17, and Jose Deharo, 32, were taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla by Life Flight from the beach, which is part of Camp Pendleton but is leased to the state.

Diaz suffered a broken leg and chest wounds, and was in the intensive care unit. Deharo broke his left leg and suffered cuts to his scalp, said Elie High, a hospital spokeswoman.

Kean said the agents did not hear any screams and did not know what had happened until they found the men at the foot of the cliff.

Migrant advocates said the Border Patrol agents were wrong to have chased the men in a dangerous area.

“These agents know that that cliff is there, they work the area, so there is no excuse for them to chase them into there. If they use this cliff to try to trap these guys, then they have to be held accountable for what happens,” Roberto Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee said.

“This just shows the desperation of these workers when they come to the U.S.”

Cisneros was heading to Los Angeles to live with his sister and find work, according to relatives there. It was his first trip to the United States, they said; he either was about to be married or had just married. His sister, Guadalupe Cisneros, went to Tijuana and met him over the weekend, then returned to Los Angeles Monday night to await his arrival, they said.

Authorities called Guadalupe Cisneros early Monday to inform her of her brother’s death, according to Delfino Lozada, her brother-in-law.

Martinez discounted the Border Patrol’s insistence that the agents did not chase the men off the cliff, pointing to the agency’s puported history of pursuing undocumented immigrants onto freeways and, in other parts of the country, using rivers to trap them.

“There is no way to verify if they were chased off the cliff or not, but history is on our side,” Martinez said.

Martinez said the Border Patrol could easily have monitored the men, waiting for them to meet up with their smuggler again on the north side of the checkpoint, and apprehended them while in the car.

Both Martinez and the Rev. Rafael Martinez, head of the North County Chaplaincy, said this was the first instance of undocumented workers falling off of the cliffs near the checkpoint.

“The incidence of people getting badly hurt is so frequent that it has become almost scandalous,” Rafael Martinez said.

But Kean said the public should blame the smuggler, not the immigration agent.

“These smugglers are unscrupulous and have no regard for the value of the life of people,” he said. “We want to take a very close look at this case and pursue it to the full extent of the law.”

Juarez, who was driving a stolen Ford pickup truck, was arraigned today in federal court on one count of alien smuggling. The two other undocumented immigrants caught were held in San Ysidro to be used as witnesses against the smuggler, Kean said.

Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella contributed to this report.

Fatal Fall Near Border Checkpoint

One person was killed and two critically injured Sunday night after they fell off a 50-foot bluff while trying to elude the Border Patrol. 1) Five Cross Freeway: A suspected smuggler drops off five people and tells them to cross the freeway. They are spotted, and two officers are dispatched in vehicle. 2) Two Captured: Two members of the group are found hiding in bushes. The other three have fled. 3) Three Fall: Agents using flashlights find three men at the bottom of the cliff. 4) Suspected Smuggler Arrested: A witness who saw the group earlier on freeway points out the suspected smuggler to agents at the checkpoint. Source: U.S. Border Patrol; San Onofre State Beach Researched by DANNY SULLIVAN / Los Angeles Times