Seymour Proposes Battle on Crime by Illegal Immigrants : Border: Campaigning senator calls for more federal agents and a national tracking system to catch suspects. He says three military bases should be used to house those convicted.

Overlooking a dreary no-man’s-land between the United States and Mexico, Sen. John Seymour on Monday proposed a $700-million battle against those illegal immigrants who commit crimes and become a costly drain on the California court and prison systems.

Seymour, a candidate for election to the Senate, made the appearance at what has become a standard campaign backdrop for those announcing plans to get tough on illegal immigration--a dusty mesa southeast of downtown San Diego where the small houses of a Tijuana neighborhood are crammed right up to the 10-foot-tall border fence.

Seymour said that California state and local governments spend $400 million a year to house, identify and deport illegal immigrants who have been convicted of committing crimes after coming across the border.

“It seems to me we have to get them out of our country and off the backs of our taxpayers,” Seymour said.

Seymour proposed a “Criminal Aliens Impact and Removal Act,” which he said he will introduce in the Senate by mid-August.

The program would:

* Authorize the hiring of an additional 1,500 Border Patrol agents in the San Diego area along with supplying equipment and vehicles.

* Provide funds for a national “criminal alien” tracking system and to hire more INS officials to identify and deport such criminals.

* Permit a fine of up to $100,000 for anyone employing an illegal immigrant to commit a crime and provide for seizure of assets of smugglers of illegal immigrants.

* Authorize the conversion of three military bases, not identified, to house illegal immigrants convicted of state crimes.

Seymour (R-Calif.) was briefed for about 10 minutes by Gus de la Vina, the regional Border Patrol chief, announced his program to a handful of media representatives and answered a few questions.

About a score of uniformed border patrolmen stood watch nearby with several Seymour aides. Also on hand was Rudolph Valadez, the new western regional director for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Seymour, a candidate for the final two years of the term Gov. Pete Wilson won in 1988, repeated the announcement later in the day in San Pedro after touring an INS detention center on Terminal Island.

Seymour declared that a fifth of all criminals in San Diego County jails are illegal immigrants. In Los Angeles, it is one-fourth, he said.

Seymour did not mention the name of his Democratic opponent, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, during either of the official senatorial visits. But at one point he noted in an aside to a reporter that he supports the proposed free-trade agreement between the United States and Mexico while Feinstein opposes it. Seymour said he believes that the trade pact would reduce the number of illegal immigrants by providing more economic opportunity in Mexico.

Feinstein has said she opposes the agreement as long as workers in Mexico are paid so much less than workers in the United States are paid for comparable labor. The absence of trade restrictions would only encourage more U.S. companies to move operations across the border, she has said.

Asked for comment, Feinstein campaign manager Kam Kuwata labeled the Seymour visits “an election-year stunt . . . creating more paperwork, more growth in Washington and more gridlock.”

Seymour would do better by voting to allow Senate passage of a pending bill that would give hundreds of millions of dollars in crime-fighting aid to communities, Kuwata said.