INS Plans to Beef Up Ranks in California

The Immigration and Naturalization Service, one of the few federal agencies to be voted a large budget increase by the Republican Congress, announced plans Thursday to use the extra money to substantially boost its roster of Border Patrol agents and workplace inspectors--especially in California.

The agency will significantly raise the number of agents patrolling the California-Mexico border, staffing ports of entry and inspecting California’s workplaces, increasing its staff in the state by 1,260, or more than 25%.

“With this budget, the INS will continue its three-year effort to beef up the border--especially the Southwest border--and remove criminal and other deportable aliens from our streets and prisons,” INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said in unveiling specifics of the agency’s record $2.6-billion budget, a 24% increase over last year.

Critics said they fear that such an aggressive hiring effort will fill the Border Patrol with inexperienced rookies and result in a dramatic increase in abuses at the border--a recurrent problem with past hiring pushes by the Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies.

And the prospect of 58 new inspectors visiting the state’s factories, restaurants and construction sites prompted concern among immigrant-rights groups, which contended that all Latinos and Asians become suspect during INS raids, such as recent Los Angeles-area operations at garment factories and a public disease-control clinic.

“We don’t think the INS should be running around trying to round up people who are already here,” said Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza. “Going after abusive employers is one thing. Making raids is another.”

But Meissner vowed that agents, focusing on industries with a history of hiring illegal immigrants, would not make haphazard raids. The Clinton administration has vowed to reinvigorate the work-site enforcement program, which officials acknowledge had become a low priority despite a watershed 1986 law making it a crime for employers to hire illegal immigrants.

Meantime, the INS commissioner said 462 new agents sent to the California border will include 84 veterans moved from interior stations, while the others will undergo comprehensive training before they go into the field. In Los Angeles, INS Regional Director Gustavo De La Vina vowed that standards would not be diluted.

“We want to get these agents on board as soon as possible,” said De La Vina, a former Border Patrol chief in San Diego, “but we’re not going to jeopardize our training standards.”

The INS budget plans, announced with some fanfare in both Washington and Los Angeles, are yet another indication of how the Clinton administration is eager to turn the immigration issue in its favor during this election year--especially in vote-rich California, where primaries are scheduled for next month and the Republican convention is slated for the border city of San Diego in August.

Just last month, the administration unveiled a much-ballyhooed border buildup that it said will include new agents at the border and airports, enhanced use of checkpoints and additional military and police assistance.

The budget increase for the INS--approved earlier this year at a time of cutbacks, furloughs and government shutdowns--also underscores how the once-obscure issue of immigration has emerged as a major concern in the White House and on Capitol Hill, particularly since the Proposition 187 debate in California.

The INS estimates that more than 4 million illegal immigrants are now in the United States, but nobody is sure how many enter each year. Last year, the INS said it stopped about 1 million illegal immigrants at the border.

The administration’s goal, said Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, is to “build a firm and fair immigration policy that upholds the rule of law even as we protect our immigrant traditions and welcome new citizens and legal immigrants.”

The 4,125-person boost in staffing nationwide is a dramatic one for the INS, which currently employs about 19,000 people--including more than 5,000 Border Patrol agents--in locations scattered from the San Diego-area border city of San Ysidro to Vermont. Although staffing will rise generally throughout the country, other places where the increases will be concentrated include Texas, Arizona and New York.

The new hiring will overload the existing training facility at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia. Congress has approved a new training site at a closed military base in Charleston, S.C., which officials said should be up and running in April.

Still, many of the new agents will not arrive at their posts until well into next year, INS officials said.

Along with the increased hiring, Meissner said, the agency will put new resources into detaining and deporting illegal immigrants and improving computer technology to keep track of them. In California, there will be 76 new staff members hired to process incarcerated immigrants for deportation at the end of their prison sentences. And an automated fingerprint identification system will be expanded to six additional locations in the state.

Citizenship efforts will be expanded by $52 million, with 103 new staff positions planned for the Los Angeles and San Francisco offices, both deluged under a record demand that has been prompted in part by the anti-immigrant mood perceived by many noncitizens. Community activists, who have been encouraging immigrants to sign up for U.S. citizenship, call the numbers minimal compared to the huge emphasis on enforcement, especially along the border.

“Once again, the INS is [giving priority to] all this enforcement stuff even though hundreds of thousands of people are becoming citizens and are adjusting their status, and they have to go through a lengthy and frustrating process,” said Bobbi Murray of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles, who cited the lengthy delays at the INS office in downtown Los Angeles. “This just shows you how this is a 1996 political issue.”

The largest share of the new federal money will be concentrated at the border, where the new employees will find more advanced radios, infrared scopes, motion detectors and other equipment.

Members of California’s congressional delegation applauded the flow of resources to the state but said that President Clinton must go even further. The immigration reform bill that the House will consider next month calls for the denial of public benefits to illegal immigrants and creates a worker verification program even broader than the one that the INS is now testing among select employers. Under the budget plan, the INS test program--under which employers verify the immigration documents of newly hired personnel--will be expanded to include more than 1,000 employers nationwide, compared to about 230 now.

“More Border Patrol sounds great, but is the administration going to stop the reason folks are coming in the first place?” asked Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), a hard-liner on the issue who also wants states to be able to deny public schooling to illegal immigrants. “If there’s no incentive to come here, you don’t even need any Border Patrol.”

Despite all the new resources, Meissner acknowledged that she did not know how much more it might take to tackle such a widespread problem. “We’re well along the road, but I wouldn’t want to make any guesses,” she said.

And even as she spoke, the INS office in Atlanta was announcing that it had arrested 22 illegal immigrants working at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base in North Carolina. The workers were being paid $17,000 a year as plumbers, roofers and construction workers.

Lacey reported from Washington and McDonnell from Los Angeles.