Reno Announces 200 More Border Agents for San Diego : Immigration: Attorney general says crackdown will also be intensified by technology and deportation.

As Mexico’s economic crisis threatens to cause an increase in illegal immigration, U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno announced Wednesday that the federal government will intensify its crackdown at the border, adding 200 new Border Patrol agents in San Diego by year’s end.

The new agents will bring to nearly 60% the increase in border control forces on the line in San Diego since President Clinton took office two years ago, Reno said at a San Francisco news conference.

“We are committed to improving the security of this nation’s borders,” Reno said.

Along with the new agents will come improved technology and equipment to help officers spot illegal immigrants and process them for deportation once they are caught, she said.

In addition, the Immigration and Naturalization Service will step up efforts to deport illegal immigrants convicted of felonies and double the number of staff in California to speed the denial of spurious asylum claims.

After leaving San Francisco, the attorney general made stops in San Diego and El Centro on Wednesday before heading to Arizona and Texas to hear from agents and INS administrators and promote the Clinton Administration’s immigration initiatives.

Reno’s visit to the San Diego border, her third since September, coincides with the economic crisis in Mexico that threatens to boost illegal immigration as some citizens of that country, further impoverished by the plunging peso, seek refuge in the United States.

Like previous devaluations, the crisis will probably aggravate the factors driving illegal immigration, according to several analysts.

If that analysis is correct, the border could be the scene this year of an increasingly powerful clash of social and political forces: desperate migration from the south and aggressive enforcement and anti-immigration sentiment from the north.

“There could be more tension as people try to cross and meet this tougher enforcement on the other side,” said Todd Eisenstadt, a research associate at the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies at UC San Diego.

Reno said she was concerned about the Mexican economic crisis, but added that the border buildup is part of a long-term plan set in motion well before the current crisis or the passage of Proposition 187, California’s anti-illegal immigration initiative.

The 200 new agents are in addition to 300 added in 1994 and 78 redeployed last year from desk jobs to the field. Overall, the San Diego force will have increased from 995 agents in 1993 to 1,573 by the end of this year. As part of the ongoing Operation Gatekeeper crackdown in San Diego, the Border Patrol will temporarily shut down the immigration checkpoint o Interstate 5 near San Clemente next month, officials said. The agents assigned to San Clemente are being shifted to the border as part of an evaluation of whether the freeway checkpoint should remain open.

The Administration’s first priority, Reno said, is to deter immigrants considering entering the United States illegally and force those who still try to cross the border to shift to the east, where they will be easier to capture in the remote deserts of southeastern California and Arizona.

The San Diego sector has seen a 32% drop in apprehensions since October, which officials take as a sign that the beefed-up patrols are discouraging illegal immigration. Because the stricter enforcement in San Diego and El Paso appears to have boosted illegal immigration in Arizona, the Border Patrol sector there also will receive at least 100 new agents this year, a one-third increase, according to immigration officials.

“We must look at the border as a comprehensive effort so we don’t find (illegal immigrants) coming in California’s back door,” Reno said.

Despite the additions, Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego) expressed dismay that California will get only 200 of the 700 new agents authorized last year under the Clinton crime bill. San Diego accounts for about half of Border Patrol arrests.

“I don’t think we are getting the share that we need,” Filner said. “We are very upset with the attorney general. . . . They are assuming a success here before there is an actual measurement of that.”

Moreover, a spokeswoman for Gov. Pete Wilson said the governor remains unconvinced that Clinton is serious about controlling the border or reimbursing California for the state’s costs of educating, jailing and providing health care to illegal immigrants.

But Reno said President Clinton has done far more than his two Republican predecessors--Ronald Reagan and George Bush--to control the border. She said the immigration agency she inherited in 1992 was a “stepchild” that had been mismanaged and underfunded for more than a decade.

Weintraub reported from San Francisco and Rotella from San Diego.