House Panel Puts Checkpoint Closer to Closure

Another attempt to close the Border Patrol’s immigration checkpoint near here cleared its first major hurdle Wednesday, when a congressional committee approved a spending package without funding for inland checkpoints anywhere in California.

Spearheaded by Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), long an advocate of closing the controversial checkpoints, the House Appropriations Committee acted in defiance of Doris Meissner, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who announced last month that inland immigration barriers would stay open indefinitely.

The INS had experimented with closing the checkpoints for several weeks last fall and again in the spring and transferring Border Patrol agents to the international border that divides San Diego County from Tijuana.

The agency operates inland checkpoints on Interstate 5 just south of San Clemente and on Interstate 15 near Temecula. The five-month test, dubbed Operation Gatekeeper, redeployed 140 agents from those areas to the border.

But with Congress adding hundreds of agents to the Border Patrol in recent months, the INS was no longer forced to choose between staffing the border or staffing the checkpoints, prompting Meissner’s announcement.

Packard, however, sees it differently.

“Virtually all the cities south of the checkpoints want them removed,” said Packard, who represents areas of both San Diego and Orange counties. “Let’s move all the assets, personnel and equipment to the Mexico-San Diego border and do an even better job at the border.

“Let’s also not forget people north of the checkpoints,” he said, “who want an end to high-speed chases [of immigrants and drug smugglers] and people dying or ending up in emergency rooms.”

But INS officials said Wednesday that a shutdown of the San Clemente and Temecula checkpoints would damage the Border Patrol’s continuing crackdown on illegal immigration and drug smuggling in Southern California.

In response to the Appropriations Committee’s action, INS Western Regional Director Gustavo De La Vina and Chief Johnny Williams of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector said the checkpoints are a vital second line of defense.

“The checkpoints are very instrumental to our overall strategy,” De La Vina said.

Immigration officials said the committee’s action could undercut Operation Gatekeeper and other initiatives, such as Operation Disruption, a task force targeting the smugglers of illegal immigrants, which has produced 3,400 arrests in the past two months.