Reno Names Prosecutor as ‘Border Czar’

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has appointed U.S. Atty. Alan Bersin to a newly created post of “border czar,” which will oversee the far-flung array of law enforcement agencies at the U.S.-Mexico line, Justice Department officials said Friday.

The designation of Bersin as the attorney general’s special representative on border issues represents an unprecedented effort to improve the fight against drug and immigrant smuggling and overhaul a bureaucracy that suffers from internal conflicts, corruption and inefficiency. It also recognizes that the traditional federal approach--dividing the border into geographical and jurisdictional fiefdoms--falls short of the complex reality of the almost 2,000-mile-long boundary, which requires a comprehensive strategy, officials said.

“The border is a continuous region,” said Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “You have four states, a series of federal agencies. And we need to look at the border as one entity.”

While remaining the top U.S. prosecutor in San Diego, Bersin will report directly to Reno and coordinate multi-agency projects, such as using the FBI to target immigrant smuggling as organized crime and reorganizing inspections by the INS and the Customs Service, officials said. Bersin also will represent the attorney general in discussions with the Mexican government on immigration, drugs and other binational issues. The relationship between the two countries on border affairs has improved over the past several years but remains fraught with tension.

Bersin, 48, attended Yale and Oxford with President Clinton and Harvard with Vice President Al Gore. He worked in private practice in Los Angeles and taught law in San Diego before being named U.S. attorney in November, 1993. He quickly became the Justice Department’s unofficial point man at the border, embodying a Clinton Administration enforcement campaign that has combined substantive progress with aggressive public relations.

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Reno, who will make the official announcement in San Diego today, chose Bersin because of a series of innovations he has instituted, officials said. The well-connected Bersin has walked a political tightrope at the border with some success: He has tried to crack down on illegal immigration and smuggling while stressing dialogue with Mexico and humane treatment of immigrants.

Bersin created the Imperial Valley Project, a 17-agency drug interdiction drive in the cocaine-smuggling corridor in the desert east of San Diego, and oversees a task force investigating the spread of official corruption in federal agencies guarding the international boundary.

Federal prosecutors also have stepped up prosecutions of immigrants with criminal records and of immigration-related crimes as part of an INS buildup known as Operation Gatekeeper. There were 1,039 prosecutions for felonious illegal entry into the United States this year alone, equaling the totals for the previous nine years, angering criminal defense attorneys and overwhelming federal jail space.

The Navy has agreed to house the overflow of inmates in the 300-bed brig of the Miramar Naval Air Station, Justice Department officials said.

“He will be the attorney general’s eyes and ears,” Justice Department spokeswoman Carol Florman said. “The importance that the southwest border has taken on needs a more coordinated approach than a normal governmental structure will allow. This is reinventing government, to some extent.”

The creation of a “border czar” addresses some of the problems identified by critics who complain that agencies such as Customs and the INS have redundant missions and are mired in inefficiency and infighting. Although stopping well short of coalescing into a single border agency, as some critics suggest, federal law enforcement agencies here increasingly work together--the DEA and FBI run a joint unit investigating Tijuana drug mobs, for example.

“What this is really saying is that things that have worked in California can work in other parts of the border,” a high-ranking Justice Department official said. “Alan Bersin as chief law enforcement official here has been very innovative and is a natural choice.”

In an interview earlier this week, Bersin said the campaign against illegal immigration and smuggling requires innovative thinking and stiffer deterrents.

“This is a region that is crucial to the national agenda,” Bersin said. “It is the principal corridor for immigration and drugs. . . . It has got to be taken on in a regional context. We have to make the border a lawful place.”

In new measures to be announced today, the Justice Department plans to build on innovations launched in San Diego. Bersin said the INS will open two immigration courtrooms at the Otay Mesa port of entry, the first such facility at the international boundary. The “port court” will make deportations faster and more efficient and help realize an estimated 1,800 additional prosecutions of repeat crossers next year.

This number accounts for only a fraction of the half-million arrests at the San Diego line each year. But the crackdown indicates an increased willingness to prosecute repeat border-crossers, who have traditionally been allowed to return voluntarily to Tijuana. Migrant advocates and defense attorneys fear that non-criminals could be wrongly targeted. “Just about everybody is a repeat crosser,” said Claudia Smith, regional counsel for California Rural Legal Assistance. “It’s one thing to go after the people who have criminal records; it’s another to criminalize poverty.”

Bersin insists that he wants to focus on suspected smugglers and people with criminal histories. Once identified and deported, these suspects can be charged with a felony if they return. He said he has no interest in prosecuting “economic migrants.”

“I am still firm that I don’t want to blur that distinction,” Bersin said. “Constant repeat crossers can be presumed to be coyotes,” or smugglers, he said.

In another ambitious plan to slow down the revolving door at the border, U.S. officials are scrambling to work out details of a recent agreement with Mexico to fly captured immigrants back to the Mexican interior rather than releasing them into Tijuana. Described by both countries as voluntary, the $4.5-million pilot program is intended for repeat crossers, who will essentially face a choice between prosecution and being flown home at U.S. expense, INS Commissioner Meissner said.

“We are getting people to where they came from so they are not stranded,” Meissner said. “We are talking about people to whom we say, ‘You are not going to cross here.’ ”

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The program poses numerous logistical problems that are still being resolved, officials said. The concept of interior repatriation has been urged by immigration-control activists and politicians, but it remains a topic of internal debate. Some officials disagree with the decision to make participation voluntary; others doubt that the plan will work, predicting that immigrants will take advantage of it to get a free trip home.

Today’s visit by Commissioner Meissner and Atty. Gen. Reno is intended to announce new programs and review the results of Operation Gatekeeper, but it also occurs amid concern in Baja California about alleged vigilante activity against suspected illegal immigrants. In the rural hills east of San Diego, homeowners and ranchers are upset about an influx of immigrants trying to circumvent the defenses in San Diego.

In an Oct. 2 incident documented by the state human rights ombudsman’s office in Tecate, a group of migrants said they were abducted at gunpoint and beaten by citizens who then turned them over to Border Patrol agents. There has also been talk of self-styled militia groups offering to guard the border, officials said.

The Border Patrol and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department are investigating the incidents, Bersin said.