Temecula Won’t Pursue Lawsuit Against INS

Temecula city officials say they are pleased with the U.S. Border Patrol’s efforts in rewriting its high-speed pursuit policy and will not pursue legal action against the agency.

The city previously filed--and lost--a lawsuit against the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which oversees the Border Patrol, claiming its policy for high-speed chases was ambiguous and left too many life-and-death decisions to the discretion of the pursuing officers.

The suit was prompted by the deaths of six people in June. They were killed when a truck being chased by the Border Patrol and carrying 12 illegal immigrants crashed in front of Temecula Valley High School. Five of the dead were Temecula residents, including four teen-agers. The sixth was one of the immigrants.

A U.S. District Court judge ruled that the city had no right to sue the federal agency and threw out the case.

The city’s legal staff was studying whether to give the lawsuit a second try by taking a different legal approach, but Tuesday night the City Council decided to abandon the legal fight.

“We had to address the question of whether it would accomplish anything,” Mayor Pat Birdsall said. “The first lawsuit did . They sat up and listened to us, and we do believe now that they’re addressing the issues we raised.

“Now that they’re listening to us, a good start has been made on what we wanted accomplished,” she said.

The Border Patrol is introducing a new policy--which it said was being rewritten even before the June 2 crash--that calls for, among other things, closer supervision of chases and better coordinating with local police and laws, two criteria sought by Temecula.