No More ‘Frontier Days’ at the Border : <i> A modern solution is required--reform the Border Patrol : </i>

When it was first established in 1924, the U.S. Border Patrol was little more than an assortment of former frontier gunslingers hired to ride along the Rio Grande on horseback keeping an eye out for tequila smugglers.

A recent investigation by Times reporters raises troubling questions about whether the Border Patrol has been able to keep up with the changing times. In many instances, reporters Patrick J. McDonnell and Sebastian Rotella found, Border Patrol agents are still quick to use force, including guns, while trying to track down and arrest illegal immigrants and criminal suspects. Since 1990, Border Patrol agents have been prosecuted or disciplined for a variety of serious offenses, including murder, rape and drug trafficking.

Although officials of the Border Patrol and its parent agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, reject the notion that they are overseeing an agency in crisis, it is hard to read the Times reports without coming to that conclusion. And to make matters worse, the nation’s busiest border-control agency is going through such turmoil just when it’s most needed. Both legal and illegal border crossings are at record numbers as relations between the United States and Mexico grow closer and more complex.

That’s why the Clinton Administration should make reforming the Border Patrol a major priority. How it and other border agencies perform in the future will not just affect U.S. immigration policy but could have an impact on many foreign policy and trade issues as Washington and Mexico City define a new relationship.

Some of the problems identified in The Times’ series can be fixed more easily than others. The INS must more carefully screen the people it hires as Border Patrol agents. It must train them better. It must monitor on-the-job performance far more carefully to identify problem agents. Border Patrol officials must also put more emphasis on coordination with their counterparts in Mexico.

Congress can help by allocating more money so the agency can buy better equipment. But it must also begin rethinking the Border Patrol’s policy. Is it good policy to stretch an already thin line of officers by assigning agents to far-flung outposts like Salinas? Or even San Clemente, where high-speed chases starting from a traffic checkpoint remain a sore point with many Orange County residents? Wouldn’t the INS get more bang for the buck by putting all of its Border Patrol personnel right at the border?

Congress should also dust off an old proposal by the Office of Management and Budget to merge the Border Patrol, the Customs Service and other agencies that have people on the border into a single border management agency. That merger would make law enforcement and other important border functions, like international trade, simpler and more efficient than is possible with the current bureaucratic hodgepodge.

Clearly, life along the border has changed a lot since 1924. It requires an intelligence and sensitivity today that the Border Patrol’s horsemen of old could hardly have imagined. Affairs along the U.S.-Mexican border are far too important these days to be left to gunslingers.