Rep. Packard Urged to Push for Checkpoint

The City Council has urged Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) to push the construction of a planned new Immigration and Naturalization Service checkpoint at Camp Pendleton to reduce the number of high-speed Border Patrol chases that pass through the city.

The council’s latest call for the planned checkpoint was contained in a letter to the congressman that expressed concern over the June 2 Border Patrol chase that ended in a crash that killed five people in Temecula.

Noting that the accident occurred at a checkpoint similar to the one at San Onofre, San Clemente city officials said the planned checkpoint’s design would ensure that “pursuits could be stopped before they get started.” Construction of the $30-million, 16-lane facility, planned for Horno Canyon in Camp Pendleton, is expected to begin in 1993.

San Clemente leaders and residents have expressed outrage for many years over Border Patrol chases that wind onto city streets. Mayor Joseph Anderson said Thursday that “we’ve had some near-misses” and that it is only a matter of time before a tragedy occurs.

Anderson and other council members told Packard they believe the new checkpoint will reduce the number of chases.

In a report presented to the council Wednesday night, Police Chief Michael L. Sorg said traffic would be funneled off the freeway to permanent inspection booths at the south end of the checkpoint. Motorists would then drive along a loop road to a second inspection lane at the north end before returning to Interstate 5.

The design would allow Border Patrol agents to bottle up anyone who tried to flee, Sorg said.

The Border Patrol arrests drug smugglers and car thieves at the San Clemente checkpoint, Sorg noted, adding that if the new checkpoint reduces high-speed chases, “we’ll all come out winners.”

But critics disagree on the effectiveness of the planned facility. Dr. Thomas Shaver, head of the trauma unit at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, said the checkpoint would not prevent deaths of pedestrians who try to run across Interstate 5 to avoid Border Patrol agents.

He said 15 immigrants were killed along an eight-mile stretch of freeway near the checkpoint in 1990 alone and at least 29 others were brought to the hospital with serious injuries after being involved in INS-related accidents during the last five years.

“When people are hit on the freeway, they’re never the same,” Shaver said. “We should try to stop people at the border, not at a checkpoint 60 miles away.”