Highway Patrol Is Right: Safety First : At least the CHP’s new policy on immigrants heading north can save lives

Freeway-wise Californians are familiar with the sight of a CHP car weaving across traffic lanes to halt motorists when an accident blocks the road ahead. Now the California Highway Patrol is stopping traffic for a new reason, one stemming from the chaotic illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexican border. CHP officers in San Diego County are routinely creating traffic breaks on two border-area freeways so immigrants can dash from the median strip--which they often use as a walkway--to safety on either side.

In most other areas of the country, the idea of a highway patrol having a policy of routinely clearing freeways of pedestrians surely would be seen as bizarre. But in a border community where 52 migrants have been fatally run down in accidents since 1989, the policy is rightly accepted as humane.

Even motorists who normally have little tolerance for freeway delays are giving Highway Patrol officers the thumbs-up sign once they realize a slowdown may be a lifesaver. And why not? Anyone who has cruised California freeways knows the queasy feeling that comes when a pedestrian is seen poised near the roadway, eager to dash across traffic.

For years, median strips just north of the border have been unofficial safe havens for illegal migrants because the Border Patrol, for safety reasons, doesn’t arrest pedestrians on medians. Often, the migrants rendezvous there with smugglers who drive them farther north.

A variety of remedies has been attempted, including, most recently, closing several freeway lanes in order to slow traffic. But that well-meaning effort backfired: The slowed traffic just made the safe havens safer, attracting even more migrants to the median strip--and the deadly dance through traffic continued.

The new policy--along with four miles of fencing that will soon be put up in the medians--is a thoughtful evolution of the previous efforts. And it will inconvenience motorists only marginally. But for it to succeed, the CHP must keep its promise not to round up migrants and routinely turn them over to the Border Patrol for deportation or prosecution.

In other words, this must be a public-safety effort, not a law-enforcement ruse. Otherwise, panicked immigrants will continue to risk all to avoid apprehension.

The estimated 350 men, women and children who dash across San Diego freeways nightly stand as a stark reminder of the human fallout of our nation’s ambivalent border policy. At least the new policy of the California Highway Patrol may help to reduce the dozens of deaths that occur each year among migrants just a few miles into El Norte.