Line of Fire : San Diego Border Patrol Chief Tackles Complex INS Job

With his cowboy boots and rumbling Texas drawl, the colorful Gustavo De La Vina has come to personify the U.S. Border Patrol’s struggle to hold the line at the San Diego-Tijuana border.

De La Vina was recently promoted to western regional director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service after serving four years as chief of the Border Patrol sector here, the agency’s busiest outpost. He led a campaign to fortify the border during a key chapter in the region’s history, when illegal immigration surged to political prominence. Now De La Vina is leaving the trenches of “the line” to head an overworked bureaucracy extending from the California international boundary to Montana to Guam.

But before he moves on, De La Vina must resolve a dilemma that is testing his shrewd and measured approach to the border’s treacherous politics. Gov. Wilson has demanded an El Paso-style “blockade” by the Border Patrol in San Diego; just Tuesday, Wilson’s challenger Kathleen Brown also issued a call for a border crackdown.

De La Vina, however, insists that deploying a wall of agents on the front lines would only provoke violence because of the greater volume and desperation of migrants here. So he has decided to accelerate a gradual buildup instead, effectively doubling the number of agents guarding the border by October. In contrast to the El Paso blockade, which has virtually shut down a 20-mile stretch of the Rio Grande, some of the San Diego agents will be positioned inland to intercept crossers after they enter.

“It’s a solid approach,” De La Vina said. “It’s not as dramatic as the El Paso operation. (But) we worked so hard to eliminate the violence and try to make it a more controllable, peaceful-type situation, that any operation that would result in a volatile situation I don’t want to touch.” The final decision will be made by Justice Department officials in Washington, De La Vina said.

De La Vina’s promotion has been welcomed by law enforcement officials, immigration control activists and even a few critics of the agency, who praise him for imposing a semblance of order at the line.

“There’s a sensible regime of control in place,” said U.S. Atty. Alan D. Bersin in San Diego. “He has been calm where others expressed panic. He has been consistent where others have jumped back and forth with the political wind.”

On the other hand, some immigrant advocates and INS insiders question whether this 25-year veteran of the Border Patrol--an agency they say is plagued by flaws in hiring, supervision and internal policing--can effectively run an array of complex service programs at a delicate political moment.

“What was particularly troubling was that he should be named at this time, with the anti-immigrant debate as out of control as it is,” said Claudia Smith of California Rural Legal Assistance. “He’s a bit of a cowboy, and the job doesn’t call for that.”

Andrea Palacios Skorepa, who directs a Latino social services center in San Diego, takes a different view. Skorepa said she has clashed with De La Vina several times. But she said he has become more open to community and civil rights concerns, citing the formation of a Border Patrol citizens advisory panel on which she serves.

“I can remember that at first he was very brash,” she said. “He has made some real great strides personally and in understanding the importance of the involvement of the community.”

Asked whether his background qualifies him for the job, De La Vina said: “I was able to manage San Diego, the largest sector in the United States. I’m not only dealing with enforcement, I’m dealing with international issues, with a lot of the political issues, with a whole spectrum of issues from the community. The way I look at it is if I was able to survive San Diego, I think I’ve got a shot.”

Under President Clinton, the regional director’s job has regained power that was diluted in a George Bush-era reorganization of the underfunded, often demoralized immigration service. De La Vina will earn about $110,000 a year in the new job, which is based at regional headquarters in Laguna Niguel.

His top priorities include deciding the fate of Border Patrol freeway checkpoints in north San Diego County, where traffic, chases and accidents have generated opposition to the agency’s operations--especially the Interstate 5 checkpoint near San Clemente. In addition, Brown and other politicians have said the agents at the inland stations would be more effective guarding the border.

Assuming the border buildup reduces illegal crossing, which has already declined 15% this year in San Diego, De La Vina leans toward shutting down the checkpoints.

“We have got to take a look at the checkpoint situation,” said De La Vina. “It might have worked several years ago, but we are up to five or six thousand vehicles per hour going through those checkpoints.”

In Los Angeles, De La Vina said, he wants to relieve a paperwork backlog and long lines at the Downtown Federal Building with computerization and the creation of more satellite offices in the county.

The grandson of Mexican and Spanish immigrants, the 55-year-old De La Vina--known widely as “Gus”--grew up in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas. He served as chief of the Border Patrol Academy in Georgia and assistant chief in El Paso before taking command in San Diego, a choice assignment but also a lightning rod for the media and politicians in California and Mexico.

In 1990, the borderlands seethed with violence and confrontations. High crime statistics reflected the danger to migrants. The tattered chain-link border fence was a symbol of chaos; crowds gathered nightly in U.S. territory and clashed with frazzled agents. There were riots, shootings and recurring complaints that the Border Patrol used excessive force.

The new chief set about demarcating his turf. Authorities erected metal fences along the 14-mile strip, installed high-intensity lights, built new roads and other fortifications. They established effective cooperation with Grupo Beta, a Mexican police unit formed in 1990 to protect migrants.

As a result, crime along the border has declined in many categories--murder, rape, rock-throwing at agents. The zone has become safer for illegal crossers, yet more difficult to traverse without being caught.

“When I look back at those days, and I go out to the field now, it’s a big difference,” De La Vina said. “People were dying out there.”

In the past three years, the agency has benefited from the discovery by politicians of the potent border issue. De La Vina has shared the obligatory rugged backdrop of the Tijuana River Valley at press events with the likes of presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, Gov. Wilson and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). After years of neglect, the Border Patrol has gained unprecedented increases in funding, agents, support personnel and technology.

De La Vina was partially a lucky recipient of a political trend. But his mix of charm and hard-nosed cop talk has made him an effective pitchman, particularly because Border Patrol officials are not always comfortable in the spotlight.

“Gus is the best thing the patrol had going for them,” a government official in San Diego said. “He’ll talk to people. He’s a gentleman.”

On the other hand, critics charge that the quest for resources spurred De La Vina to exaggerate the magnitude of the immigrant influx.

“He has misused his bully pulpit,” Smith of California Rural Legal Assistance said. “He has bandied apprehension figures about without putting them in context.”

Immigrant advocates also clashed with De La Vina regarding problems that have hurt the entire agency: alleged abuse of suspects and a disciplinary system that is criticized by the agents themselves. Smith asserts that commanders refuse to admit wrongdoing by the troops.

“There’s a bunker mentality,” Smith said. “He doesn’t countenance any criticism. Every complaint we have filed has been found to be unsubstantiated.”

In response, federal officials cite concrete indicators such as reduced shootings by agents--San Diego went more than three years without a fatal Border Patrol shooting. U.S. Atty. Bersin said De La Vina “has entirely changed the nature of the problem at the border. And in so doing, he has saved lives.”

Nonetheless, this year the sector has experienced a flurry of five agent-involved shootings, one of them fatal, and several misconduct cases.

Prosecutors and Border Patrol chiefs say they are speeding up a cumbersome oversight process that has made investigations drag on for years. For example, officials say privately that commanders will probably recommend dismissal of an agent who shot and wounded an unarmed border-crosser near the Tijuana River levee in July--an unusually rapid turnaround for such a case.

And in an effort to break a notorious code of silence among agents, federal authorities are investigating a group of officers who allegedly harassed a co-worker for reporting an incident in which a migrant was hit by a thrown rock, De La Vina said.

De La Vina’s adjustment to a new white-collar arena will depend on the aides with whom he surrounds himself, observers said, and his ability to focus the varied, sometimes conflicting missions of the INS--naturalization, asylum and detention.

Some immigration service veterans regard De La Vina’s appointment as a “big gamble,” one official said. But he added: “If he’s getting good advice, his instincts will serve him well.”