City Plans Suit Over Border Patrol Chases

Temecula city officials were preparing a lawsuit Wednesday to force the Border Patrol to change its high-speed chase policy as a congressman called for a review of such chases and the effectiveness of the patrol’s freeway checkpoints.

Temecula authorities will seek a temporary restraining order in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to force the Border Patrol to stop high-speed chases in the city until the pursuit policy is rewritten, City Atty. Scott Field said Wednesday.

The City Council decided Tuesday night to sue over the June 2 crash that killed six people in front of a high school. A Chevrolet Suburban carrying 12 illegal immigrants crashed into a passenger sedan while fleeing from the Border Patrol, killing the sedan driver and two teen-age students. The vehicle then careened through the intersection and killed a brother and sister walking to school. One of the immigrants died Sunday.

The 16-year-old driver has been charged with murder and a passenger has been charged with alien smuggling.

The crash occurred after Border Patrol agents spotted the stolen vehicle near the I-15 immigration checkpoint south of the city and gave chase, though officials maintain the agents broke off the pursuit shortly before the accident. The checkpoint has been shut down indefinitely as the Border Patrol conducts a review.

The city’s lawsuit will argue that the existing Border Patrol policy is “unreasonable” because it “doesn’t provide any guidance” to pursuing agents as to when to cut off a chase, Field said.

The INS declined public comment about the lawsuit.

According to the eight-page Border Patrol pursuit policy, agents are required to call off a chase when the pursuing agent decides that continuing “would result in undue hazard to the general public or any other person,” or if a supervisor orders it halted.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) met in Washington on Wednesday with INS Commissioner Gene McNary, who has sent his director of internal investigations to look into the Temecula incident.

Packard said he will ask the House subcommittee on international law, immigration and refugees to hold hearings on Border Patrol chase policies and the use of non-border checkpoints.

Packard said the hearings should address lingering problems such as illegal immigration, Border Patrol staffing and inadequate federal reimbursement to local government agencies that are drained by concentrated populations of illegal immigrants.

“Since the Immigration Reform Act, we have not really seriously looked at the immigration service, if it’s doing its job,” Packard said. “There are still huge amounts of illegal crossings at our borders. There are serious problems before and after the checkpoints.”