SIMI VALLEY : Gallegly Joins Push for Border Program
Stepping up their push to stem illegal immigration, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and 22 other California lawmakers asked President Clinton this week to impose a sweeping program to crack down on illicit crossings from Mexico along the San Diego border.
The Oct. 13 letter to Clinton, written by Gallegly and signed by 21 Republicans and two Democrats, echoes a request that Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) and Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego) made to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno at a Sept. 28 meeting. It was released Friday.
The lawmakers are calling on the Administration to extend a U.S. Border Patrol program called Operation Blockade that was begun last month along the Rio Grande between the facing frontier cities of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso. An unprecedented deployment of 450 agents has virtually shut down illegal crossing along a 20-mile stretch of the border. It has been met with strong support in U.S. border cities and anger in Mexico.
Reno said last week that she was studying a similar proposed crackdown in San Diego. She told a UC San Diego forum Oct. 7 that the Justice Department will announce “new and innovative approaches to redeploying resources” at the border in coming months. She did not specify what measures were planned.
In the letter to Clinton, the lawmakers cited a report by the state Senate Special Committee on Border Issues that estimated that illegal immigration costs state and local government up to $5 billion a year in California. They also cited testimony by El Paso Mayor Larry Francis that “after Operation Blockade began, he observed no street vendors, beggars, shoe shine boys, prostitutes or other vagrants in the city’s downtown area.”
Gallegly, a member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on international law, immigration and refugees, has called for hard-line measures to curtail illegal immigration since 1991.
The two Democrats who signed the letter to Clinton were Reps. Jane Harman of Marina del Rey and Gary A. Condit of Ceres.
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