U.S. Erects Last Strip of Border Fence : Barrier: Holdout landowner settles suit, allowing the government to close a half-mile stretch along Otay Mesa boundary.

U.S. Army reservists welded and pounded in scorching heat Friday to seal off the last stretch of border where smugglers can barrel into the United States from Otay Mesa.

The work on the half-mile section of steel-mat border fence, expected to be completed early next week, began after a holdout landowner recently agreed to settle his lawsuit with the government.

The U.S. Border Patrol, the Army Corps of Engineers and the National Guard have been building the 10-foot fence for more than a year to discourage drug traffic and the constant flow of illegal immigrants northward.

But, when they ran into Curtis Corn’s property, which stretches east from the migrant crossing point known as the soccer field to the end of La Media Road, construction ground to a halt.

When the fence builders showed up at Corn’s property in late November, he blocked their path with heavy equipment and tractor-trailers.

“I told them, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ They said, ‘The hell we can’t,’ ” said Corn, who lives in Bonita. “Then they wrote us a letter saying that they were. And we wrote them a letter saying they weren’t.”

Corn filed a lawsuit against the Immigration and Naturalization Service early this year challenging a 28-year lease that the federal government says gives it rights to a 20-foot border strip across his property.

After months of negotiations and a U.S. government countersuit, both parties agreed to settle the dispute, Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Waltz said. Corn will lease the 20-foot border strip along his property to the federal government for four years, at $500 a year. At the end of the four-year period, the lease will either be renegotiated or the fence and lateral road that accompanies it will be condemned, Waltz said.

The INS is satisfied with the settlement, Waltz said: “The fence is being built, and the gap is being closed. That’s what we wanted.”

Corn is the only landowner to file a lawsuit against the government and demand compensation for the use of his land, Waltz said.

The entire border area is dotted with leases, each applying to its own swatch of borderland. But Waltz said it is unlikely that anyone else will try to collect.

“From a legal standpoint, there is no question that we have valid leases all along the border,” he said.

Besides, Corn’s motive for waging his small fight against the fence is singular.

Though Corn said he thinks the fence is “beneficial,” he was hoping to use his leverage with the federal government to help settle a longstanding dispute with National City officials over an old train station there, which he owns.

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The station has been designated a historic landmark for almost a decade, and, Corn said, city officials will not let him paint it or re-roof it.

“I wanted the federal government to put pressure on National City to get them off my back. They won’t let me make any repairs or anything,” Corn said. Though he still has no guarantees, National City officials told Corn they would work with him to get him some permits if he settled his fence dispute. “They told me they would ease up on me,” he said.

But Corn said he was not celebrating. “My attorney bill was $10,000,” he said. “It is not like I won anything. You can’t fight the federal government. I can’t even fight the city of National City.”

Others are pleased with the outcome.

On Friday, U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado), who spearheaded construction of the hulking steel-mat fence after his idea for a concrete border ditch fell through, heralded the closing of the gap as a great leap in the fight to plug a porous border.

“This was the most traveled drug gap on the Mexican border,” Hunter said of the flat Otay Mesa expanse where thousands of vehicles carrying drugs and migrants have made a break for the safety of crowded San Ysidro streets and South County freeways.

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Two years ago, the Border Patrol would often witness more than 300 drive-throughs a month on Otay Mesa, Hunter said. In 1991, as the fence went up, that number came down to 900 crossings, and this year they have averaged about three a month--all onto Corn’s property.

The federal government negotiated with more than 15 major landowners along the 14-mile border stretch, and numerous small landholders as well, Hunter said. Corn was the only holdout.

“Typically they have been very cooperative. They have given us easements,” Hunter said of the landowners. “(Corn) had some differences of opinion. I am just glad to see it done. I don’t care why.”

The half-mile opening at Corn’s property, a dusty agricultural flatland covered in a cluster of greenhouses at one end and a lot of idled big rigs at the other, has actually helped channel the vehicle drug traffic, making interdiction easier.

Since December, Border Patrol agents have made seven busts at the half-mile gap on Corn’s property, netting more than $39 million worth of drugs, Hunter said.

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Asettlement with Corn was reached Aug. 3, Waltz said, and work to sew up the Corn corridor began earlier this week. On Friday, water tankers hosed down the dusty road that had been graded by the National Guard, and Army reservists hauled the broad steel mats off flatbed trucks to weld them to concrete posts set earlier this week by Border Patrol agents.

“It’s good army training,” said a sergeant, who was supervising more than a dozen reservists at work on the fence.

In the remaining opening, only small saplings planted on the Mexican side separated Corn’s property from the busy frontage road that runs next to Tijuana’s main airport.

Hunter has promoted the fence construction, launching a search of military bases “from Guam to Guantanamo Bay” for nearly 180,000 sheets of steel formerly used as emergency landing mats.

Hunter’s involvement with the project is known even in Mexico, where the fence bears some unfavorable graffiti about him, he said.

About 12 miles of fence have already gone up between Otay Mountain and the ocean, and Hunter said construction on the final 2 miles, in hard-to-reach canyons and riverbeds, will begin within two weeks.

But Hunter has bigger plans for the fence: He wants to take it all the way to Texas.

“I want to duplicate it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico,” Hunter said. “I have had inquiries from the National Guard and other congressmen in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, asking about the fence.”

Hunter said that, as the border representative in California, he plans to extend the fence to the Arizona line, focusing on problem areas. Those include a stretch from Dulzura east to Boulevard that has seen an increase in drive-through drug traffic since the steel fence went up, he said.