Checkpoints Become Flash Point : Immigration: Packard’s plan to close posts at San Clemente and Temecula, divert funds to the border draws ire of those who call move ill-conceived.

The press conference was only moments away, but some of the principals were already tongue-whipping Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), whom they accused of being the No. 1 villain in trying to close the inland immigration checkpoint on northbound Interstate 5.

“Can you believe what that jerk is trying to do?” said an exasperated Ben Seeley, head of the Border Solution Task Force. “Four years ago, he wants it expanded. Now, he wants it closed!”

Nodding his agreement was Harold Ezell, former western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who, like the others gathered here Friday, is a fierce proponent of leaving the checkpoint alone.

On Friday, that seemed to work in tandem with being a bitter foe of Packard, who recently authored an amendment--approved by the House, now pending before the Senate--that would divert all manpower and funding from the San Clemente and Temecula checkpoints to the border itself.

Seeley and Ezell were joined by Peter Nunez, a former U.S. attorney, and the heads of several citizens groups--most prominently, Ross Perot’s United We Stand America--in praising the role of inland checkpoints nationwide while denouncing Packard and anyone else who wants them closed.

“I think it’s outrageous,” Ezell said of Packard’s anti-checkpoint position. “Somebody ought to run against him and kick him out of office.”

Nora Bomar, Packard’s spokeswoman, said Friday from Washington that the congressman has “never flip-flopped” on immigration issues, having “done everything he can to stop the flow of illegal immigration.”

However, Packard no longer feels the San Clemente and Temecula checkpoints are worth the money they command, Bomar said.

“They’re not manned 24 hours, and Ron feels that such funding can be much better used at the source--at the border,” she said, noting that Packard had declined to be interviewed. “With the kind of beefed-up Border Patrol the bill calls for, the checkpoints won’t be necessary.”

Packard responded in a prepared statement, noting that the $507 million allocated for the INS in the pending legislation marks a 20% increase--the largest amount ever devoted to illegal immigration. Packard said he hoped that 10,000 agents could be deployed at the border by 2000 and lamented the fact that 43% of the country’s illegal immigrants now live in California.

But what was being articulated on Friday was a wildly divergent philosophy. Ezell and others suggested that no amount of funding or border deployment would eliminate the strategic benefit of the San Clemente checkpoint, on Interstate 5, or a similar center on Interstate 15 near Temecula.

“If Packard is successful, [the appropriations bill] should be called the Illegal Alien and Drug Assistance Act of 1995,” said William S. King, a former chief Border Patrol agent and now the executive vice president of Americans Against Illegal Immigration.

“Packard knows full well that the closure of these checkpoints will result in more illegal aliens and more illicit drugs reaching the interior, to Orange County, Los Angeles and beyond,” King said. “The border can never be totally sealed unless they have agents holding hands from San Diego clear across to the Gulf Coast of Texas.”

As evidence of the need for the San Clemente checkpoint, which is 60 miles north of the border, the men pointed to a drug bust occurring just a few feet away.

A truck heading north on Interstate 5 was pulled over because the driver and passenger “were extremely nervous,” according to Senior Border Patrol Agent D.A. Teeple. A drug-sniffing German shepherd promptly located what Teeple said was 50 to 60 pounds of marijuana in the spare tire in the rear of the truck.

“We just saw the importance of these checkpoints with a major drug bust right before our eyes,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Washington-based American Federation of Immigration Reform.

Closing such checkpoints would be “throwing up the white flag,” Stein said. “It’s saying to smugglers, ‘Come on in, you don’t have to worry.’ ”

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The Border Patrol itself notes that 281,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the San Clemente and Temecula checkpoints between the 1991 and 1994 budget years. During the same period, the agency seized $29 million worth of illegal drugs, $3 million in cash and 380 weapons, according to Border Patrol figures.

Opened in 1924, the San Clemente checkpoint is the busiest in the country, with 122,000 vehicles passing through daily, say officials for the agency, which employs 92 agents in San Clemente and 75 in Temecula.

Seeley said proponents of the checkpoint had tired of its becoming a “political football.” Just last fall, the INS experimented with closing the checkpoints for several weeks and then again in the spring by transferring Border Patrol agents from San Clemente and Temecula to the border.

But with Congress adding hundreds of agents to the Border Patrol since that time, the INS was no longer forced to choose between staffing the border and staffing the checkpoints. That would change with Packard’s amendment, which passed the Appropriations Committee and the House with little debate.

Packard cited the concerns of numerous cities in south Orange County, where chases involving suspected illegal immigrants and Border Patrol agents have led to accidents and pedestrian fatalities. One such chase near Temecula killed six people in 1992.

City officials in San Clemente have been particularly vocal in opposing the checkpoint.

Cities in north San Diego County have also complained, saying the presence of the checkpoint often causes illegal immigrants to flee their vehicles on northbound Interstate 5, descending into the hills of Camp Pendleton or working their way through the coastal communities of Oceanside and Carlsbad.

Nunez, a U.S. attorney during the Reagan and Bush administrations who now represents the San Diego Crime Commission, called for a lavish expansion of the San Clemente checkpoint, saying that would eliminate most safety concerns.

Packard had supported the expansion, Nunez said, noting that $31 million was allocated four years ago for increasing the number of traffic lanes to 12 and upgrading facilities and staff so that enforcement efforts could occur 24 hours a day.

But the funding got diverted elsewhere, and according to Nunez, “Packard must have felt the INS stabbed him in the back, because he now seems determined to close it down, and we think that’s wrong. In fact, it’s a serious mistake and one he’ll live to regret.”