Calls Increase for Border Patrol Reforms

For residents of this city’s historic Segundo Barrio, Bowie High School has long epitomized a collective ethic: Education means opportunity, even for those from the south side of the nearby Rio Grande.

Recent events, though, have thrust the redoubtable community institution into a distinctly maverick position: a front-line force in a campaign against excesses by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Acting on a lawsuit filed by Bowie students, alumni and staff, U.S. District Judge Lucius D. Bunton issued an extraordinary injunction in December after ruling that agents illegally harassed the barrio community. He barred agents from questioning people based solely on appearance.

“I have no doubt they stop us just because our skin is brown,” said Benjamin Murillo, assistant football coach and plaintiff, who said an agent stopped his car and put a gun to his head as he and two students drove to a game. “That’s the bottom line, our skin color.”

Outrage is mounting in other communities from Texas to California, where many--particularly Latinos, citizens and non-citizens alike--view the Border Patrol as a force that answers to no one. Calls for reform have increased from lawmakers, federal officials and immigration experts across an ideological spectrum.

“I think the Border Patrol needs to get closer to the community, particularly the Latino community,” said Bob Burgreen, outgoing police chief in San Diego. “I don’t think we can have law enforcement agencies that separate themselves from the people.”

A coalition of elected officials and activists is pushing the Clinton Administration to create a civilian review commission--unprecedented for a federal law enforcement agency--to investigate allegations against officers.

“I think there’s a need for better oversight of the Border Patrol, given the abuse that’s occurred or been reported,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles).

In the two largest U.S. border cities, leaders took initial steps last year toward community input into Border Patrol operations. The El Paso City Council set up its own “accountability” commission, while a blue-ribbon panel convened by Burgreen recommended some type of civilian involvement in San Diego.

Border Patrol Chief Michael Williams said he opposes civilian oversight but endorses non-investigative community advisory boards whose members may “not necessarily agree with the Border Patrol . . . but who will act responsibly.”

Underlying the Border Patrol’s troubles is its muddled mission. National policy calls for controlled immigration, but the government chooses not to pay for all the agents needed to approach the formidable goal. The public clamors for a crackdown on illegal immigration, but employers welcome the cheap labor.

“If we wanted to stop illegal immigration, we could,” former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Gene McNary said. “We could stop it within a week. We don’t do it, because we’re diplomats.”

Burgreen calls the agents’ job “almost insanity,” adding: “What this breeds is a contempt for the system in the minds of the officers, in the sense that it’s usually a useless, senseless game-playing. . . . How you resist becoming calloused to people I don’t know.”

Would-be reformers seek to improve the patrol’s haphazard internal discipline process and intensify scrutiny by outside watchdogs, particularly the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which monitors the patrol and other agencies.

Inspector General Richard J. Hankinson told a congressional panel recently that discipline throughout the INS--the patrol’s parent agency--is “spotty” and “uneven,” allowing violators to elude punishment or delay it for months or years.

Lack of oversight personnel, despite recent increases, remains a reason why the disciplinary machinery grinds at a torpid pace. “Clearly we want to do a better job of making this response as rapidly as possible,” Hankinson said in an interview.

To help identify potentially abusive Border Patrol officers, the inspector general has begun tracking complaints against agents. Inspectors have also instituted a toll-free number to field reports about abuse and have improved cooperation with Mexican consulates, which help find victims and witnesses.

The Border Patrol has also made some reforms in the wake of community criticism.

After the Bowie High School decision, chiefs in El Paso unveiled a new bilingual complaint form and a brochure explaining how to file complaints.

And after last year’s high-speed chase and crash that left six dead near the Temecula immigration checkpoint, management revamped policies in a way that reduced the number of pursuits. Since 1980, at least 35 people have died in Border Patrol pursuits.

It is up to the Border Patrol to punish wayward agents, but cases such as that of former Texas Agent Robert Handy illustrate the system’s lapses. Handy figured in two high-speed crashes during the 1980s that left four Mexican citizens dead, 16 injured, and resulted in court-ordered compensation payments of almost $300,000.

In the first instance, court papers show, Handy fired the shotgun blasts that triggered the crash of a fleeing pickup filled with unarmed illegal immigrants, two of whom died, including a 7-year-old girl. Superiors declined discipline and instead rated Handy’s performance that year as “superior,” personnel records show.

Nonetheless, a U.S. District Court judge in Laredo ruled that Handy was grossly negligent and lied to investigators. The judge awarded $171,449 to victims and relatives.

Five years after the first crash, a service vehicle that patrol superiors determined Handy was driving at excessive speeds slammed into the rear of a smuggler’s sedan, killing two passengers in the trunk.

This time the Border Patrol suspended Handy for 30 days. But an arbitrator rescinded the action, ruling that management had “tacked on” the earlier incident for which Handy had never been reprimanded. U.S. authorities paid $125,000 in claims after the deaths.

Handy, who this week denied any wrongdoing in the cases, remains with the patrol in Spokane, Wash.

Patrol officials acknowledge that they have not undertaken any systematic effort to monitor cases that cost taxpayers in civil claims. Los Angeles police recently began close scrutiny of such claims, seeking to identify problem officers or patterns of misconduct.

“The civil cases can give us information we might not have come across before,” said Cmdr. C.F. Rick Dinse, who heads the Los Angeles Police Department’s training group and human resources bureau.

Moreover, experts say the Border Patrol should modernize the way it hires and manages agents.

For instance, new hires are not subjected to psychological tests and other screening safeguards routinely employed by big-city police forces and other law enforcement agencies. The Border Patrol, with its stressful job and minimal entry standards--there is no requirement for college degrees or police experience--has a particular need for psychological exams, patrol officials said.

“That would make a difference,” said Richard Ulrich, training director at the Border Patrol Academy in Georgia. “It’s something we have been trying to accomplish for a long time.”

Federal personnel rules prohibit psychological testing of new agents.

Although there is no guarantee that psychological exams and other steps would detect all problem agents, the case of Donald C. Toovey, a former El Paso agent, indicates that such tools might help.

Toovey’s stormy seven-year tenure at the patrol ended last July, when he resigned after a psychologist found him unfit for duty. “It might have been boiling up underneath me all that time,” Toovey told The Times from Hawaii, where he now resides.

In an off-duty fracas after drinking beer on New Year’s Eve of 1990, Toovey opened fire with his service-issue .357 magnum during a brawl in a stadium parking lot, sending panicked fans scurrying for cover. The agent, who had been arrested but never prosecuted for a previous barroom altercation, was convicted of aggravated assault and given six years probation.

Later, Toovey said he had experienced a flashback to a melee a dozen years earlier in which he and a friend were badly beaten at a neighborhood barbecue. “I made up my mind 12 years ago, that if I could help it something of this nature would’nt (sic) happen to me again,” Toovey wrote in a letter to his chief.

Although many law enforcement agencies assign experienced officers to perform background checks on new hires, the Border Patrol is required to use the federal personnel system. Administrators complain about the uneven performance of personnel screeners who review recruits--a task once handled by FBI agents.

“My personal preference is that it be done by the FBI,” said Ulrich, the academy training director.

Hurried expansion in the 1980s enabled questionable agents to slip through, patrol officials said. Other law enforcement agencies have traced scandals to rushed hiring and poor screening, said James Ginger, a private consultant formerly affiliated with the Police Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “Virtually every time it happens you get serious repercussions five years later,” Ginger said.

Some Border Patrol rookies--seemingly ill-prepared for the realities of the southwestern frontier--appear confrontational and authoritarian in their treatment of illegal immigrants, said Lt. Adolfo Gonzalez, formerly head of the San Diego Police Department border crime squad. “(Agents) need to be sensitive to distinguishing between a true criminal and a minor infraction,” he said.

Within the past two years, the patrol training academy has implemented curriculum changes designed to improve human relations skills and reduce attrition. Spanish-language instruction was revamped and realistic role-playing scenarios added in which agents confront actors schooled in the roles of immigrants.

But no mock scene can quite replicate the bedlam of the border in San Diego or the solitary duty of Arizona, where agents outfitted with night-vision goggles and automatic weapons stake out perilous drug corridors.

“They don’t train you in the academy about how to ‘jump loads’ out in the hills,” said Thomas A. Watson, a former Nogales agent fired for his role in illicit shootings. “You learn it from other agents and from supervisors out there in the field.”

Veteran agents recommend more attention to on-the-job training, complaining that a push to retain agents and compensate for high turnover has devalued post-academy instruction.

“The pressure on training officers is: ‘Don’t be getting rid of people. We need the bodies,’ ” said T.J. Bonner, a San Diego agent who heads the officers’ union. “Then an incident happens, and we say: ‘We told you this guy was heavy-handed.’ ”

Supervisors do not always inspire confidence, agents say.

“Terrible, at best,” is how Ben Davidian, former regional immigration service commissioner, described management training in a scathing report upon resigning in 1991.

Concerned about the quality of supervision, the Border Patrol has established an advanced training facility in Artesia, N.M.

At Bowie High School in El Paso, educators contend that arrogant patrol chiefs are to blame for the illegal detentions and interrogations banned by the federal injunction. “The attitude problem comes from the top, not from the agent on the street,” said Principal Paul Strelzin.

Dale Musegades, chief patrol agent in El Paso, admitted in court in December that he had not read a previous federal court order forbidding dragnet sweeps in which agents illegally targeted Latino bar patrons. In his December injunction in the Bowie High case, Judge Bunton ruled that Chief Musegades had “done nothing” to remedy constitutional violations reported to him.

In Sonoita, Ariz., station chief Thomas B. Frederick improperly attempted to fire a trainee who had blown the whistle on a co-worker seen tossing rocks at immigrants and crossing illegally into Mexico, an administrative law judge ruled in December.

In addition, many veteran agents call for reforming what they describe as an antiquated promotion system that relies on written applications and oral interviews in lieu of standard tests and other factors less susceptible to politics.

“I think a testing system would be more equitable,” said William T. Veal, deputy chief in San Diego.

Budgetary concerns block other proposed changes, notably beefing up the force and replacing notoriously dilapidated equipment. “You are going to find cases of abuse that I don’t think would occur if you had adequate deployments,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City).

No matter how many agents are dispatched along The Line, patrol commanders harbor no illusions of halting illegal border crossing. Rather, they say a fortified presence would impose a semblance of order.

In San Diego, the patrol has deployed a record number of officers, installed new border fences and lights, and improved communication with Mexican diplomats and police. And the border has become safer for agents and migrants alike: Crime has declined and there has not been a fatal patrol shooting since November, 1990.

“People aren’t getting killed out there anymore,” said Gustavo De La Vina, chief agent in San Diego.

Even if reforms are instituted within the Border Patrol, a chorus of experts say that what is needed is a fundamental rethinking of the immigration bureaucracy.

One often-discussed approach would split the patrol from its parent Immigration and Naturalization Service to improve efficiency. Another school of thought calls for creation of a super-agency with total responsibility for the borders, merging functions split between the INS and U.S. Customs Service.

The Clinton Administration has yet to signal its intentions on border issues. A new immigration commissioner is expected to be named within weeks.

Whatever approach the new Administration takes, the larger socioeconomic forces driving illegal immigration defy short-term bureaucratic remedies. Consequently, Border Patrol agents seem destined to remain pawns in the clash between Latin American aspirations and U.S. opportunity.

“What we’re doing is stopgap: putting the Border Patrol out there at the point and asking them to do an impossible job,” said Burgreen, the San Diego police chief. “What we need are the best minds in both countries thinking about long-term solutions that are acceptable to both countries. . . . What the answer is, I’m not sure. But it seems we can come up with something better.”

Times staff writer John Hurst and Times researcher Nona Yates contributed to this series.