Border Crossers Shift Efforts to Port of Entry : Immigration: Crackdown stymies smugglers using canyons, open terrain. Attempts to sneak through San Ysidro in vehicles and with fake documents rise.

Smugglers frustrated by a month-old Border Patrol crackdown have mounted a concerted assault on the San Ysidro port of entry, immigration officials said Monday, citing brazen incidents this weekend in which vehicles crashed through inspection gates and sped north.

Attempts to sneak past border inspectors with vehicles and fake documents skyrocketed in October, according to statistics released Monday.

“The smugglers’ frustration level is rising,” said Rudy Murillo, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The intensifying pressure on the freeway port of entry results from the success of the Border Patrol’s Operation Gatekeeper, which since Oct. 1 has doubled the Border Patrol deployment guarding the 14-mile San Diego-Tijuana boundary. As the show of force makes it more difficult for illegal immigrants to elude capture in canyons and open terrain, smugglers are probing the international freeway crossings with a mix of subterfuge and aggressiveness, officials said.

Compared to 1993, the number of illegal crossers caught using fraudulent immigration documents in October went up about 85%, while those with counterfeit or altered passports went up 129%. There were 491 attempted entries without inspection--a 643% increase in illegal immigrants trying to sneak through on foot or hidden in vehicles, officials said.

On Saturday morning, a pickup truck zoomed through the closed gate of Lane 6 of the port of entry, officials said. Four hours later, two cars did the same. The suspected smugglers eluded pursuing inspectors in both incidents.

Another potentially disturbing sign was the arrest last week of a U.S. Customs Service inspector accused of complicity with smugglers. Investigators arrested him after discovering three vans packed with 68 illegal immigrants approaching his inspection booth at the San Ysidro port of entry and learning that the vans had been seen at his home earlier in the week.

The case raises fears that the smugglers’ new focus on the port of entry could result in more attempts to bribe inspectors. Corruption is always a risk because of the wealth of smuggling rings and the considerable autonomy of inspectors at the world’s busiest border crossing.

“It’s always a concern,” said Jeff Casey, the deputy special agent in charge of Customs Service investigations in San Diego. “If you’ve got an inspector at the port of entry, you’ve got the keys to the kingdom. All you have to do is get him to let one load through and then you’ve got him for life.”

Federal investigators are trying to determine how long the suspect, eight-year Customs Service veteran Guy Henry Kmett, worked with the sophisticated smuggling ring and whether other inspectors were involved.

As part of Operation Gatekeeper, the INS has deployed a special team of inspectors drawn from across the country to reinforce the port of entry. The Immediate Response Team members are experts in detecting document fraud and are to help guard against “port runners,” who are difficult to stop if they make it past inspection booths onto Interstate 5.

The Border Patrol made 24,768 arrests in San Diego last month--a 20% drop compared to last year. The statistics suggest that the operation is deterring border crossers and increasing the agents’ effectiveness, officials said.