Will Border Buildup Be Effective? : Immigration: Patrol says hundreds more agents, high-tech equipment will deter illegal entry. But history of neglect and abuses temper the enthusiasm.

The U.S. Border Patrol has long been regarded as the blue-collar underdog of law enforcement.

Agents drive battered vehicles. Radios fail during pursuits. Lack of personnel in San Diego forces agents into tedious tasks such as interviewing lines of prisoners being returned to Tijuana--often the same faces night after night.

In an effort to end the frustration and anarchy at the border, the immigration control initiative announced by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno last week will send unprecedented reinforcements to San Diego: a 40% increase in the 1,000-agent contingent combined with sorely needed new technology.

“These physical improvements and the increase of agents will give us a considerable degree of control that we don’t have now,” said William T. Veal, deputy chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector. “Our end goal is deterrence. We achieve that by ensuring that anybody who tries to enter illegally will be caught.”

The buildup will deter would-be illegal immigrants and redirect the flow away from a region that records half of all border arrests, Border Patrol commanders say.

Less optimistic observers say the Clinton Administration acceded to only a moderate buildup in response to political pressure. “It’s not enough,” an immigration official said. “They are going to have to do more.”

Memories of neglect temper the enthusiasm among agents.

“Everybody’s just kind of waiting and watching,” said Border Patrol spokeswoman Ann Summers. “It’s a big, big move in the right direction. As much as has been promised to us in the past, when we actually start seeing it is when we are going to see the highest morale.”

The plan has also renewed fears about the potential for abuse by an agency with a record of misconduct cases and allegations. For U.S. and Mexican migrant advocates, the acquittal in Arizona on Thursday of a Border Patrol agent who shot an unarmed suspect in the back served as an ironic counterpoint to the attorney general’s announcement.

But Justice Department officials intend to avoid the hiring rushes of the past that allowed dubiously qualified agents to slip through. Doris Meissner, the new commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is emphasizing better screening, training and discipline, and creating a citizens advisory panel.

Avoiding past mistakes is crucial, according to experts. Although new resources will unquestionably worsen the odds for illegal crossers, the volatile confrontation at the international line will continue between a growing paramilitary police force on one side and determined migrants on the other.

“It depends not only on the number of the agents but on the mentality of the agents,” said Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Bi-National Center for Human Rights in Tijuana. “As crossing becomes more difficult, that makes people desperate. The irritation among the migrants is created not only by the presence of Border Patrol agents but by the smugglers, the presence of robber gangs. This mix creates tension.”

The two-year INS plan includes an already appropriated $45 million package for this year aimed at shutting down the main corridors of illegal immigration. The patrol will deploy 620 additional agents in San Diego and El Paso, which together recorded three-quarters of border arrests last year.

An additional 400 San Diego agents--including about 100 existing agents who will be relieved from support duties by new civilian workers--will be divided among three border stations and a planned roving unit, Veal said.

Unlike last year’s border blockade in El Paso, which fielded a massive show of force overnight, the increase in San Diego will unfold gradually as classes graduate from the patrol’s academy.

To ensure that agents are properly equipped, the government will supply 200 more vehicles in San Diego, improved infrared detection devices and motion sensors, and new radios designed to prevent eavesdropping by smugglers of drugs and immigrants.

“Some of the technology we’ve found on smugglers made us look like we were playing with toys,” Summers said.

The fortification of The Line, as the boundary is known among agents, will accelerate. The patrol will build a second fence behind the existing 10-foot metal barrier on a barren stretch of terrain known as Otay Mesa, creating a 50-yard-wide corridor in which agents can trap illegal crossers. High-intensity lights are being installed along the 14-mile strip of canyons and mesas. An existing mile of lights and double and triple fences have reduced crossings and violence along the Tijuana River.

Under the plan, commanders also hope to eliminate one of the job’s most curious and tedious rituals, in which agents must return to their stations to conduct brief interviews with dozens of weary captured migrants. After the paperwork is complete, the prisoners are then returned voluntarily to Tijuana, where many turn around and cross again.

Bilingual civilian employees will take over routine processing duties, freeing agents to spend more time in the field.

“I want to have those forms filled out by civilians rather than Border Patrol agents,” Veal said. “It’s going to mean agents are used more effectively.”

New computers will streamline paperwork. Commanders hope that an automated fingerprinting system will permit identification of all arrestees for the first time, providing records on arrest levels and repeat offenders after years of murky estimates.

At present, Border Patrol agents could conceivably capture and release a wanted murderer among the crush of immigrants because they do not always have the time or means to identify hardened lawbreakers.

The shift to the border could eventually curtail the operations of the San Clemente and Temecula freeway checkpoints, which employ about 170 agents. Those stations are coveted assignments because they provide opportunity for promotions and alternatives to the grueling work at The Line, but Commissioner Meissner told The Times that their value may decline.

“We’ll continue to have those checkpoints at the present time,” she said. “But if we succeed in San Diego in the way we envision with this level of resources, there will be much more deterrence at the border because we’ll be preventing entry, and we will then have to look again at whether those checkpoints really make sense.”

If the plan works, arrests will rise and then decline as discouraged migrants give up or go elsewhere, officials said.

“Nobody’s naive enough to think it’s going to cure the total problem of the border,” said INS spokesman Duke Austin in Washington. “But as they move to other areas, the flow becomes more manageable.”

The second year of the proposal would add another 390 agents to the patrol, pending congressional approval. In addition to border enforcement, the wide-ranging initiative would also expedite deportation of immigrants convicted of serious crimes, streamline the political asylum process, strengthen sanctions against employers of undocumented workers and promote citizenship for legal immigrants.

In Tijuana, however, many Mexicans believe that the forces of poverty and hunger will continue to drive illegal immigrants over any number of obstacles.

“It makes it difficult, but not impossible,” said Clark, the human rights activist. “The ingenuity of the migrants and the talent of the smugglers surely will find a way.”

Most illegal crossers will keep trying to sneak across from Tijuana because of the forbidding terrain of deserts and mountains to the east, Clark said. There have been predictions of harrowing tactics--boat forays along California beaches and massive charges on Interstate 5. And it remains to be seen if increased competition will push smugglers to raise their prices, which have remained constant since the late 1980s, Clark said.

The get-tough policy has critics of the Border Patrol worried about the potential for violence. The agency has suffered from flawed screening, training and oversight that have caused scandals and controversies. Clearly aware of the patrol’s spotty image, the Clinton Administration underscores the importance of internal scrutiny and human rights.

Agents are receiving additional civil rights and ethics training, Meissner said last week. To keep better track of potential problem agents, an internal watchdog unit in Washington is monitoring complaint patterns more closely. Personnel officials say they are speeding up woefully slow background investigations, which have remained incomplete long after agents were hired and allowed recruits with criminal records to take the field.

“We have had problems in the past,” Austin said. “We have made great strides. We can identify people who may be problems before they become entrenched.”

The commissioner has also created a nationwide civilian advisory panel that will begin functioning by the summer, Austin said. It will be made up of two Justice Department representatives and 13 volunteers to be appointed by Meissner. Unlike a civilian review board for the patrol proposed by Latino legislators, the advisory panel will have no investigative powers and will concentrate on improving community relations.

“She thinks there’s a need for that type of input on the handling of complaints and in our own disciplinary actions and monitoring those actions,” Austin said. “This will assist her in getting an external view.”