Can the El Paso Experiment Work Here?

For two weeks now the U.S. Border Patrol has made an all-out effort to halt illegal border crossings near El Paso, the second-busiest stretch for such crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border. So far it seems to be working--but not without significant costs.

The border control experiment--dubbed Operation Blockade by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Border Patrol’s parent agency--involves 450 Border Patrol agents, many working specially authorized overtime. The manpower has been concentrated along a 20-mile sector of the border near the Texas city and Ciudad Juarez, its Mexican twin city.

The results have been noteworthy, if still somewhat inconclusive. Border Patrol arrests have dropped substantially, from about 1,000 per day to as low as 100. That’s because a heavy presence of border guards has deterred many Mexicans from wading across the Rio Grande River, which usually runs shallow in the area. Local police say they do not have the statistics yet to determine whether crime has dropped as a result of the operation, but residents of El Paso--especially in neighborhoods close to the border--applaud the operation, saying it keeps out panhandlers and petty criminals.

There is no doubt that a similar operation in the San Ysidro-Tijuana area would be widely applauded. But whether it would be as effective is less certain. The San Diego area is more heavily urbanized, and not as isolated as El Paso. Illegal border crossers in Southern California are not day laborers who come across and then go back but rather immigrants eager for steady work further north. To get here they often obtain help from organized smuggling rings, and once here they usually stay longer. As a result, they would be harder to permanently deter. Finally, a big increase in Border Patrol operations in Southern California is sure to cost more than the $250,000 allotted for the Texas operation.

Still, Operation Blockade’s results so far suggest that some, though of course not all, border control problems can be solved if the federal government provides enough money--and if federal officials are innovative. For example, the INS might trade off big arrest numbers for more comprehensive control at the border. Or, say, the Border Patrol might reassign agents from the interior and station them on the border.

Finally, it must be acknowledged that Operation Blockade has apparently had negative effects on El Paso’s economy and has created tensions with Mexican officials not just in Juarez but as far away as Mexico City. Whether these negatives will in the long run outweigh the positive effects of tighter border control is still an open question. Clearly, the pluses and minuses of such an operation would have to be carefully considered before anything similar was tried in Southern California. But the El Paso experiment was worth trying--and remains worth watching.