Agents Begin Massive Sweep Along Border

As the setting sun gleamed off the steel border fence where Mexican immigrants gather in the shadows between despair and uncertainty, Operation Gatekeeper rumbled into action Saturday.

Using horses, bicycles, sedans, all-terrain vehicles and small high-speed boats, about 200 agents of the U.S. Border Patrol deployed in a three-tiered formation along fields, canyons, riverbanks and beaches.

The operation culminated months of preparation and politicking by unleashing an unprecedented show of the Border Patrol’s force designed to repel a seemingly unstoppable advance of humanity: illegal immigration. Driven as well by the potent force of electoral politics, the much-touted federal crackdown along the busiest 14 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border had begun.

“Operation Gatekeeper goes full blast,” said Gustavo De La Vina, Border Patrol chief in San Diego and new western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “We are tying everything together that we have been working on for the past 18 months: personnel, fences, lighting, technology. We are starting to roll.”

The day was heavy on photo opportunities and press availabilities, conveying a sense that the Border Patrol is overcoming what U.S. Atty. Alan Bersin described as a “generation of neglect.” The mission of the perennially overworked, underfunded agency has been synonymous with futility; critics have alternately derided the Border Patrol as abusive and ineffective.

“We have not seen this type of attention before,” Border Patrol spokeswoman Ann Summers said as she steered her van along the dusty concrete levee of the Tijuana River. “In the past, it was always something negative. It’s a nice change.”

On the south riverbank, word of the Border Patrol buildup spread quickly among the food vendors who serve as the unofficial communications network for the immigrants. In a conversation through the border fence, one would-be immigrant asked William Pink, chief of the Imperial Beach station, if he was an “old” agent or part of the new reinforcements.

Some tried to beat the start of the operation by staging daylight “banzai runs,” charging in groups through the fields and farmland west of the San Ysidro port of entry. Pursuing Border Patrol vehicles raised sheets of dust and black-gloved agents tumbled out to chase the immigrants through the underbrush.

Ramon Andrade said he had never seen so many agents. The farm worker from Jalisco, a bantam, curly-haired 36-year-old who was interviewed on the south riverbank, had been caught twice in the last two nights.

“It’s getting harder to cross,” Andrade said. “Last time, this agent roughed me up a little bit. He said, ‘Why did you run?’ I said, ‘Because I was trying to escape. Your job is to catch me. Mine is to keep running.’ ”

By Saturday night, the beefed-up Imperial Beach station had recorded more than 500 arrests, significantly exceeding its daily total during previous weeks. Commanders predicted that the arrests would continue to rise in the coming weeks, then decline.

Saturday’s deployment showed the resources that have been pouring into the region: shiny new Jeep Cherokees and Ford Broncos replacing dilapidated vehicles, computerized fingerprinting systems with overhead television monitors speeding the laborious ritual of filling out interview forms with prisoners.

Although there are no specific figures for the cost of the operation, the Border Patrol received an additional $45 million in its 1994 budget, the bulk of which went to the San Diego office.

Operation Gatekeeper is an augmented version of a blockade in El Paso that has stymied immigrants in a 20-mile area and provoked demands from politicians for a similar crackdown in California.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno answered those demands during a recent border visit when she pledged to match the El Paso results. The operation is at least partly a Clinton Administration counterattack timed to neutralize Gov. Pete Wilson’s emphasis on the immigration issue and aid California Democrats in November, officials acknowledge.

But commanders hope that the five-month effort will also dissuade illegal immigrants or push them east of the Tijuana-San Diego zone into rural hills and forests where enforcement is easier. The true test will come in January and February, when a 40% personnel increase will be complete and illegal immigration picks up after the traditional year-end decline.

On the Mexican side of the border, immigrants and experts predicted that Operation Gatekeeper will work--but only to a point.

Despite political rhetoric depicting illegal immigration gone wild, Border Patrol arrests have declined 20% during the last two years in the increasingly well-guarded San Diego sector, while increasing in Arizona. The U.S. initiative will probably accelerate those trends, forcing immigrants into more crossing attempts, swelling crowds on the Tijuana border and propelling smugglers of immigrants toward the arduous eastern routes, said Hugo Miguel Ayala, director of the Mexican border police unit known as Grupo Beta.

“There will be more migrants in the area for more days,” said Ayala, whose 45 officers are on alert. “They will expend more physical and economic effort, it will take more time, they will face greater risks. But I do not think the flow will stop.”

As the migratory flow encounters resistance, authorities will contend with the dangers of crime against immigrants in isolated terrain and of violence between U.S. agents and frustrated would-be immigrants, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.

“If the attitude of the Border Patrol is correct and respectful, that is one thing,” Ayala said. “But if there are abuses, there could be a strong reaction.”

The Border Patrol alignment is designed to keep the peace, commanders said, adding that field agents participated in the planning. Rather than massing agents in confrontation with migrants at the line as in El Paso, the three-tiered maze of patrolling vehicles extends a mile inland.

“In the past, we have acted on what (the illegal immigrants) did,” Pink said. “Now they are playing to our tune. . . . We’ve suggested that if there’s violence, the agents can back off from that particular area. We have the resources now to contain it.”

The Border Patrol has conducted similar operations, although with less fanfare. When De La Vina deployed an extraordinary number of agents in January, 1992, arrests surged and smugglers organized mass charges of illegal immigrants through the freeway ports of entry into southbound traffic. More illegal immigrants are also expected to try to use fake documents or hide in vehicles.

As a deterrent, Grupo Beta officers on the Mexican side of the border are warning immigrants of the dangers of freeway dashes, and the INS has assigned more inspectors to the legal ports of entry.

Caltrans and the CHP are prepared to help respond to an influx of freeway runners.

Instead of releasing all captured immigrants back to Tijuana, the Border Patrol is trying to head off conflict by busing some prisoners about 120 miles east to be repatriated at the Calexico-Mexicali crossing. Agents will designate up to four Calexico-bound buses a day for young male prisoners, officials said. The reinforcements Saturday also included 93 agents transferred from the San Clemente immigration checkpoint on Interstate 5, which has been closed in a test of whether inland agents are more effective on the front lines.

The station will remain closed for six weeks, reopen temporarily and then close again in February, when the checkpoint agents will join 250 agents arriving from the Border Patrol Academy. At the end of a trial period, the INS will decide the fate of the inland checkpoints at San Clemente and Temecula.

Although agents seemed generally enthusiastic Saturday, others were more cautious. The president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents the agents, described the politically charged scramble to launch the operation as “bureaucratic insanity,” saying he remains skeptical about whether the initiative will succeed in securing the border.

“Clearly the potential for incidents is going to build up,” T.J. Bonner said. “The smugglers are going to move their cargo through. It may not get through in these 14 miles to the extent it used to, but it will get through. We are just outgunned in every respect.”

On the other hand, Border Patrol Deputy Chief William Veal said the new initiative should be evaluated as part of an ongoing strategy that features more fences and lights, tougher prosecution of smugglers, and computer-provided identification of wanted criminals and statistics on repeat crossers and other trends.

“We are trying to slow down the revolving door,” he said. “You have to take the long-term view.”