New Turf to Guard : San Clemente Officers Adjust to Border Redeployment

U.S. Border Patrol Agent Elizabeth Briones likes excitement, and she’s gotten plenty since being reassigned from the San Clemente checkpoint down to the busy and dangerous international border with Mexico.

Here, Briones is helping catch thousands of illegal immigrants, an effort that went into high gear on Oct. 1 when the federal government beefed up its border enforcement as part of Operation Gatekeeper.

But like other agents redeployed to the border, Briones, 28, of Temecula gives the clear impression she’d rather be back at the San Clemente checkpoint, where it may have been less intense but there were more different kinds of action--and fewer personal sacrifices.

“Down here, I’m just assigned to run and chase illegal aliens and catch them,” she said. “It’s like a game here.”

“We do need agents down here at the border,” Briones conceded. “But I feel they need us at the checkpoint too. Up there, it’s not just illegal aliens. We’re capturing car thieves and recovering stolen cars. We’re stopping drugs going through and helping to keep them off the street.”

For many of the more than 90 border agents who were stationed at the now-closed checkpoint, the redeployment has also meant longer hours, more stress, unfamiliar terrain and new co-workers.

Richard Gordon, 28, who also lives in Riverside County, has traded in his 40-minute commute to the checkpoint for a 90-minute trip to the border. Now, he meets half a dozen other agents at the checkpoint and they car-pool for the trek south.

“It’s sort of like being a trainee again,” Gordon said. “But we have all this experience behind us and it’s just learning the area, the tactics of the aliens and the smugglers out here.”

The reassignment has also changed the domestic situation for some agents.

Briones’ husband, Carlos, had worked for the Border Patrol at the checkpoint, but since Operation Gatekeeper began, she works swing shift and he works night shift. “At home, usually he’s going to work and I’m coming home. We hardly see each other any more,” she said.

And the agents don’t know whether things will ever go back to the way they were.

The checkpoint is being evaluated to determine whether it should reopen or be closed permanently, according to Border Patrol officials. It is expected to reopen temporarily, and agents are eagerly waiting to go back--and hoping it’ll be for good.

“At first they told us 10 days, then 15 days. Now it’s been 30 days. We just stopped asking,” said agent Roy D. Villareal, 24, of San Marcos.

The government’s emphasis in having more uniforms at the border rather than at distant checkpoints is forcing agents to adapt.

When Operation Gatekeeper started, Ted Swofford, 44, the assistant Border Patrol agent in charge of the checkpoint, said San Clemente agents had to familiarize themselves with their new border post and get used to the large contingent of agents deployed there.

“If we have 12 people on duty at the checkpoint, we think we got it made because that’s what it takes to operate it at any one time,” Swofford said. “And, down here at Imperial Beach station, they have close to 80 people working at one time. At the checkpoint, the agents know each (other) and each knows what to expect of each other in different jobs.”

In contrast to the checkpoint, which operated day and night, border surveillance is primarily night work.

At the border, agents are routinely briefed about 3 p.m. and then assigned patrol areas. They spend nights scouting darkened canyons, hoping to intercept and apprehend immigrants in the rugged terrain.

Agents on horseback, bicycles, sedans, all-terrain vehicles and small, high-speed boats are spread out in a three-tiered formation along the busiest 14 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Down here,” Swofford said, “we got people from several different stations, and although the uniform’s the same color, they don’t know much about the other agents. We’re also trying to give them the benefit of the local agents’ knowledge so they can teach the San Clemente agents their way around, rather than just throwing them out there.”

“Out there” is often dangerous, and the victims are typically migrants preyed upon by robbers.

Heightening the peril, there are signs of mounting tension between agents and smugglers of illegal immigrants since the increased effort to seal off the border.

On Oct. 29, a speeding pickup truck crashed through a closed gate at San Ysidro’s port of entry, and later that day, two cars did the same. The suspected smugglers eluded pursuing agents each time, and officials cited the incidents as evidence of growing frustration among smugglers with the border crackdown.

Operation Gatekeeper also put a brighter political spotlight on the border. Last month, U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno paid another visit to the Imperial Beach station, followed by Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner a week later. And Mexicans protested in Tijuana at the border over Proposition 187, and its perceived link to the border crackdown.

Swofford, who worked at the border three years ago, recalled changes in that time on such improvements as fencing and lighting.

“When I left here,” Swofford said, “basically the fence was a dilapidated chain link fence with more holes than you could count. Now there’s a solid-steel fence 10 feet tall.”

The improvements were part of a $45-million congressional allocation last February that also enabled the Border Patrol to buy 220 new all-terrain vehicles, Swofford said.

“When I left, we didn’t have enough vehicles to supply two shifts of agents,” Swofford said. “One shift would be out there, and in order to transition we had to bring the vehicles in during a shift change, leaving no one out there. Now we got two lines of agents out there.”

The reassignment of checkpoint agents to the border has had its advantages.

Villareal said he gets to see illegal immigration from its beginning and “probably the most interesting aspect of being down here is watching the network of the smugglers. The way they allocate their people, it’s just like transporting cargo. You see a group of 100 aliens sitting somewhere and somebody will say, ‘OK, we’re going to move.’ It’s so intriguing that a couple of whistles or hand signals is all they need and the next thing you know, all 100 will just shift and move out, now!”

It has been on-the-job training, the agents acknowledged, but checkpoint work has prepared them for their new assignment.

In fact, the checkpoint was the nation’s busiest with 122,000 motorists passing through daily. More than 46,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the checkpoint in the 1993 fiscal year, Border Patrol officials said. During the same period, agents seized 7,552 pounds of marijuana, 63 1/2 pounds of cocaine and 9 1/2 pounds of heroin.

In addition, the agents said, they seize items that usually are not mentioned in news accounts, such as untaxed cigarettes from Mexico, and sometimes, weird, illegally imported wildlife such as black clams.

“The misconception in the general public is that we only stop smuggling of aliens,” Gordon said, referring to the checkpoint. “But that’s like only half of what we do. The San Diego Freeway is the major south-to-north corridor that we have in the state. You’re bound to come across a whole lot of other crimes.”

“I remember we got a description of two carjackers who hijacked a taxi in San Diego,” Gordon said. “They had beaten up a man pretty bad. Police put out a bulletin and it said that we might expect them to be headed our way. Sure enough, they blew through our checkpoint and we got them near the (San Onofre) power plant.”

Still, it was the human cargo smuggled north that made up half of their job at the checkpoint, agents said.

Briones recalled stopping a small sports car and making a surprise discovery in the engine compartment.

“We lifted the hood to the engine and there was a carpet over the engine which caught our attention,” Briones said. “We pulled it back and there was a person there!”

And, Gordon said he has uncovered illegal drugs in secret, electrically operated compartments. “You name it, we’ve seen it,” he said.

“We’ve had people trying to pass the inspection point sitting on top of each other, thinking we won’t notice,” Gordon said. “I stopped a motor home once that had a ceiling raised 12 inches. We got 19 aliens out of that RV.”

Gordon said one characteristic applies to both the checkpoint and the border: It’s nearly impossible to predict the behavior of illegal immigrants.

“You can have 10 agents down here at the border and they’ll still jump over the fence right in front of you,” Gordon said. “Or, you can be standing on the freeway at the checkpoint and they’ll jump out of their vehicles right in front of you and start running. It’s amazing.”