Patrol Withdraws From Border Talk

The U.S. Border Patrol has withdrawn from an international conference on civilian oversight of law enforcement agencies to be held in San Diego next week.

After attending regular meetings for months concerning the conference, a senior Border Patrol official stopped showing up in mid-August, organizers say. The Border Patrol had tentatively agreed to participate in one of the panel discussions but has withdrawn that offer as well.

The patrol’s decision to back away from the conference has disappointed many of its organizers, who had hoped for greater cooperation from the agency given the early participation of Alex Kwast, the patrol agent-in-charge of the Chula Vista office.

“It was very important that they be involved,” said Maria Jimenez, director of the Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project, which has been working to reduce abuse against immigrants by federal authorities.

“This was an essential part of the process of arriving at solutions and some form of dialogue,” she said. “But, if a police agency doesn’t believe it has a problem, it’s not going to get involved.”

The three-day conference includes representatives of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the San Diego Police Department, the city, the county, San Diego State University, and several local human rights organizations. It is being organized by the International Assn. for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, which has chapters in 11 countries and 15 U.S. states.

One conference session focuses on establishing a civilian review board for federal law enforcement agencies, which the Border Patrol strongly opposes.

“We are investigated by more law enforcement agencies than any other agency in the country,” said Steve Kean, Border Patrol spokesman in San Diego.

While police internal affairs officers examine alleged wrongdoing by fellow officers, Border Patrol agents face scrutiny for similar allegations by the U.S. attorney’s office, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights division or the Office of the Inspector General.

Even Mexico can register complaints against the agency with the U.S. State Department, Kean said.

Kean acknowledged that Kwast attended a number of organizational meetings for the conference at the request of conference officials but made no promises or guarantees of further involvement.

Kwast made it clear from the beginning that the Border Patrol would not be participating in the conference or sponsoring it in any way, Kean said.

“We were asked to attend some workshop meetings and answer some questions and we have done that,” Kean said. “We had no direct involvement with the conference, and our participation has ended.”

Kwast never agreed that the Border Patrol would be represented on any panel, Kean said.

But Jorge Hinojosa, who is organizing the conference and works for the county’s law enforcement review board, said Kwast had agreed to be part of a workshop Oct. 1 entitled, “Breaking the Cycle of Violence.”

The panel discussion is to examine “the causes of civilian confrontations with law enforcement officers” including “issues associated with racism, bigotry and double standards in the adjudication of justice.”

Roberto Martinez, who documents abuses against illegal immigrants for the American Friends Service Committee, said Border Patrol officials were annoyed when his group was listed on an early conference brochure as a co-sponsor or collaborator.

When the agency protested, the name was removed and a new brochure was produced.

“They don’t want to give the perception that they are endorsing the conference because it contradicts their point of view,” Martinez said.

Martinez said top Border Patrol supervisors probably also felt uncomfortable being part of a conference that so heavily involved some of the human rights groups that often criticize the federal agency.

Conference organizers say Kwast stopped coming to meetings shortly after a congressional panel examined allegations of violence and recklessness by Border Patrol agents, including the deaths of six people in Temecula after a high-speed Border Patrol chase in June.

Until the hearings, several say, Kwast was an interested observer at meetings but said little. However, he offered the services of Russian-speaking relatives at the international conference, which is to include discussions of civilian oversight of law enforcement in South Africa, Russia, China and Mexico.

The Border Patrol’s Kean said the congressional hearings had nothing to with the end of Kwast’s participation.

“This is being incorrectly portrayed,” Kean said. “We were invited to preliminary hearings, and now they are over. I’m disappointed that some people want to turn this into something else. It’s unfair.”

The conference, at the U.S. Grant Hotel, begins a week from today and will include speakers from Australia, Miami, New York, South Africa, San Francisco and Montreal. It is scheduled to end Oct. 2.

The IACOLE group was assembled in September, 1984, during a conference on civilian oversight in Chicago to create an international forum on the subject. The first association meeting was held the following year in Toronto, and subsequent conferences have been held either in the United States or Canada.