Texas Border Crackdown Stems Tide, Raises Tensions

The Border Patrol shut down the border Sept. 19 about midnight. Samuel Casas recalls the scene with bitterness and awe.

Casas, who for 22 years has ferried illegal immigrants to downtown El Paso on a truck tire, said he watched from across the Rio Grande as U.S. agents repaired a tattered fence that had symbolized the institutionalized anarchy of the border. A startlingly large Border Patrol contingent rumbled into position, at least five times the usual deployment.

Almost two weeks later, Casas and other stymied immigrants are still watching for a break in a veritable green wall of vehicles.

“They have not moved,” said the grizzled lanchero , as the smuggler-boatmen of Ciudad Juarez are known. “I have not worked since then. We are ruined. I took people across to work in yards, restaurants, houses. Why are they doing this?”

Operation Blockade--an experiment launched in Texas with extra overtime funds and agents shifted from inland posts--has abruptly changed the rules of the game in El Paso. In the past, the Border Patrol seemed to acquiesce to the daily influx of hundreds of illegal crossings in broad daylight--replaced for now by an unprecedented show of force that appears to be working.

In this predominantly Latino city that had clashed with the agency in the past, the initiative has won fervent support.

“We don’t want the blockade lifted because we don’t want it to go back to chaos,” said Fred Morales, an activist in the historic riverfront barrio of Chihuahuita, which he said had been overrun by immigrants eluding capture and a tough street gang from Ciudad Juarez known as Puente Negro (Black Bridge). “We’re proud of our Mexican culture, but we’re Americans first. We’re poor here. This country should serve the poor here first.”

The Border Patrol has set an abrupt, potentially explosive precedent, the repercussions reverberating across two nations confronting the issues of illegal immigration and free trade. San Diego politicians have called for a similar crackdown on the California line, where Border Patrol officials have said they could greatly impede the flow with additional resources.

But the Mexican foreign relations secretary denounced Operation Blockade this week, as did business and political leaders in Ciudad Juarez. Economic desperation and the potential for an international incident have mounted. In a tense but nonviolent demonstration on an international bridge Sept. 21, Mexican protesters burned a U.S. flag in front of a phalanx of riot-equipped Border Patrol agents.

The future of Operation Blockade remains uncertain, as does its long-term impact on migratory routes, crime, social services and international relations.

“Although it has been effective, these types of operations are condemned to failure,” said Armando Ortiz Rocha, Mexican Consul General in El Paso. “I predict that the U.S. State Department will prevent these types of operations from being extended.”

The spotlight has focused on the man behind the new strategy, El Paso Chief Agent Silvestre Reyes, who says Operation Blockade is successful and will continue indefinitely.

Reyes, an immigrant’s grandson, El Paso native and 25-year veteran known for his community relations skills, took command in July. He found conflicting currents of discontent with the Border Patrol in a city with deep economic and cultural ties to Ciudad Juarez.

El Paso business owners and residents blamed illegal crossers for crime and pervasive “quality-of-life” problems: panhandlers, transvestite prostitutes, would-be window washers at intersections.

At the same time, immigrant activists spurred the creation of two community panels to monitor the Border Patrol after a series of misconduct allegations. A federal judge ruled this year that agents had systematically harassed and mistreated Latinos at a high school near the Rio Grande.

“People for years and years felt like they were under siege,” Reyes said. “By the undocumented coming through there, by the Puente Negro gang. And then they felt they were under siege by the presence of the Border Patrol as it tried to do its job in and out of their neighborhoods.”

Reyes blames a policy that emphasized racking up arrests over deterring illegal entry. Critics say that Border Patrol commanders essentially allowed crossings in order to make arrests, thereby fomenting violent encounters and questionable inland operations. About a quarter of the 650-agent force was not working at the border, Reyes said.

“Do you want numbers or do you want border control?” Reyes said. “There was a sense I got of collective frustration, even from the agents themselves. I think we got caught up in the wrong strategy. . . . This way it’s a lot cleaner and a lot simpler. . . . It eliminates the stress and concerns in the community, it eliminates the encounters and the allegations.”

Reyes received $250,000 in overtime funds from Washington for the proposal at a time when concern over immigration has surged and the perennially overwhelmed agency is requesting more funds.

The vigil involves about 450 agents spread along 20 miles from southeast El Paso to mountainous Sunland Park, N.M. Although the extensive deployment of every available vehicle gives the sense of a military mission, the results have been markedly peaceful, according to both U.S. officials and the Mexican consulate, which has received no abuse complaints.

On the north levee last week, agents read newspapers in lawn chairs and sought refuge from the sun under tarpaulins rigged between trees and their vehicles.

“The public response has been really great,” said veteran supervisor John Hubert, referring to sentiments in media polls and homemade signs and graffiti in neighborhoods. “If we go back to the way it was, I think we’ll open ourselves up to a tremendous amount of criticism.”

Apprehensions have dropped from as high as 1,000 a day to as low as 93 on Thursday. Last year, El Paso agents made about 250,000 apprehensions in the busiest sector outside San Diego.

Unlike San Diego, where most illegal immigrants are heading to job centers in Los Angeles or other urban enters farther north, about half the immigrants from Ciudad Juarez go only as far as El Paso to work and shop. The rest are bound for Dallas, Denver, Chicago and other interior cities.

Roberto Lobos, 21, a day laborer interviewed beneath the Paso del Norte Bridge, crossed frequently to work in yards and earned about $40 a day. In typical revolving-door fashion, when agents caught him he was quickly returned to Ciudad Juarez.

But Lobos has not tried to breach the blockade since it began because, as an extra deterrent, authorities are taking male detainees to remote Columbus, N.M., to return them south to the town of Palomas.

“Before you just tried again,” he said “Now they take you in the bus a couple of hours and you’re stuck in Palomas suffering until you get a ride back.”

The blockade has been a boom for smugglers, shifting migratory routes to more difficult areas and driving up fees. Many lancheros are now charging $40--as opposed to the $3 river crossing fee--to circumvent the defenses by land. The major new route is the rough terrain of Sierra de Cristo Rey west of El Paso, where an imposing Christ statue on a mountaintop overlooks the hunt by U.S. agents in a helicopter and on horseback.

But the success rate is low and the danger considerable because thieves have moved to the hills as well, said Guadalupe Diaz, 22, a construction worker and legal resident of Chicago. Sitting at the middle of the bridge’s pedestrian walkway, suspended between two nations, Diaz said he had abandoned plans to sneak his teen-age brother north.

“It’s too dangerous,” Diaz said “They say it’s easier to get through in Arizona.”

El Paso Police believe the crackdown has reduced the number of cross-border panhandlers and others involved in petty infractions, according to Sgt. Bill Pfeil.

But other than a decrease in auto theft that police attribute to heightened border security, Pfeil said, it is difficult to make a connection between illegal immigration and crime rates. Statistics have been inconclusive during the last two weeks, officials said, with some property crimes declining and other offenses remaining steady or increasing.

Critics say illegal immigrants are scapegoats for crime and every other ill of American society.

Mexico called this week for an end to Operation Blockade, insisting “on the necessity of disassociating the phenomenon of criminality on the border with Mexican migration.”

Saying the measure has disrupted life on both sides of the border, Foreign Minister Fernando Solana raised the issue in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Wednesday, according to an official communique.

In addition, Ciudad Juarez leaders have called for a boycott of businesses in El Paso, dubbing the campaign Operation Dignity. Mexicans account for about quarter of El Paso’s $4 billion retail trade.

Much of their anger focuses on stepped-up scrutiny of Mexicans who enter legally with proper documents. U.S. authorities say they are merely reacting to a 300% increase in attempts to use false documents caused by the new obstacles.

It is too soon to determine whether the reduced flow has affected hospitals and other social services, which some have asserted are burdened by illegal immigrants.

“It’s very easy to blame the undocumented,” Reyes said. “If they are a major cause of (problems), this will give us an indicator. If they are not, this will also show it.”

The ultimate test will come if heightened vigilance can be sustained for more than a few weeks, observers said. Until now, even the raucous bridge protest reflects the sense of conviviality that has long connected the two cities, said Hubert, the veteran Patrol supervisor.

“I’m standing there in my riot gear and some of the aliens are waving at me and calling my name,” he said “It was kind of embarrassing. I know them, I’ve watched them grow up.”

Hubert added, “The frustration’s building. When they’ve been without a paycheck for a month, that’s when you start getting desperate.”