U.S. Plans Effort to Stem Illegal Entry at Border

The Administration will announce a two-year “border initiative” today to reduce illegal immigration, deport illegal immigrants from state jails, step up enforcement of employer sanctions, streamline asylum procedures and make it easier for 8 million immigrants to become citizens.

The program will add 400 Border Patrol agents to the 996 now on the border in the San Diego area this fiscal year--300 of them new and 100 reassigned from desk and other support work, Administration officials told The Times.

Added resources and technology, ranging from improved sensors and mobile infrared scopes to new lighting and fencing, will be targeted on the two areas where 65% of illegal entries take place--San Diego and El Paso. Too often in the past, additional agents and equipment were “sprinkled” along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, an official said.

By the end of fiscal 1995, a total of 1,010 new and reassigned agents will be added to San Diego and El Paso, the official said.

Focusing on limited stretches of the border is in line with a recommendation of a study done for the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the last year of the George Bush Administration. The study concluded that concentrating resources on a relatively limited section of the border could have a high payoff in reducing illegal entries.

For the first time, officials said, the fiscal 1995 budget will include funds for encouraging permanent resident immigrants to become citizens, an effort that INS Commissioner Doris Meissner has made a priority.

About $30 million will be budgeted for the citizenship drive in fiscal 1995, aimed largely at the 5 million legal residents who came to the United States since 1965 and another 3 million--70% of them from Mexico--many of whom came illegally but have received amnesty and will become eligible for citizenship this year through 1996, officials said.

The move to increase enforcement of the law against knowingly hiring illegal immigrants will include an improved verification procedure for employers.

The 400 additional agents on the border fell short of the need cited by four Southern California congressmen. Republicans Duncan Hunter of El Cajon, Carlos J. Moorhead of Glendale and Randy (Duke) Cunningham of San Diego and Democrat Lynn Schenk of San Diego said they had been assured by managers of last year’s Justice Department appropriation that the bill would permit the placement of 600 agents. They urged Atty. Gen. Janet Reno in a Jan. 24 letter to add the full 600.

“After years of fighting for adequate funding and a substantive increase in agents, we are unwilling to accept a lesser number,” they wrote. “We are counting on the new agents to help us abate the crisis along the border and ask that you hire the full amount appropriated.”

Reno, however, decided that it would be better to transfer 100 agents, now performing clerical and other support work, to border assignments and to hire only 300 new agents, Administration officials said. The agents transferred from support work can be replaced with less costly new hires.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has urged that a larger number of new agents be hired for the border and who will take part in today’s announcement, said the initiative is the best package that could be obtained.

“The attorney general wants to reorganize, wants to use manpower differently, wants to have them adequately trained and equipped,” Feinstein said. “She is prepared to make a major commitment to the Southwest border and San Diego. So California does, I think, come out very well in this package.”