Harold Ezell, Co-Author of Prop. 187, Dies

Harold W. Ezell, the pugnacious former federal immigration official who helped change the face of California by implementing a sweeping amnesty program but later spearheaded a contentious backlash against illegal immigrants, has died.

Ezell, who had battled liver cancer for the past three months, was 61. He died early Tuesday at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, where he had been undergoing chemotherapy treatment.

He was a key player in immigration issues in California during a tumultuous period that saw an unprecedented transformation in the state’s demographics, largely due to a surge of immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

A former fast-food executive for Wienerschnitzel, Ezell was a longtime Republican who served as the INS western chief under presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush from 1983 to 1989. In that role, he implemented the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act that led to legal residency for nearly 3 million illegal immigrants, allowing them to come out of the shadows and eventually become U.S. citizens. About half of those who qualified for amnesty lived in California.

Ezell, son of a Christian pastor from Wilmington, took it upon himself to vigorously promote the amnesty provision of the law. In one controversial stunt, he donned a mariachi hat and sang as part of the “Trio Amnestia,” along with another immigration official and an immigrant radio personality.

The influx of immigrants to Southern California triggered deep misgivings that would ultimately lead to the passage of Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative aimed at cutting public benefits to illegal immigrants that Ezell co-authored.

Barbara Coe of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, who also served on the committee that drafted the measure, said Ezell’s name recognition and high-profile antics helped give the initiative credibility. “I think he was an integral part [of its passage], and for that, we are eternally grateful,” she said.

“Sometimes he was popular, sometimes not, but public opinion never swayed him,” said Bill King, a close friend who barnstormed the country with Ezell to promote amnesty for illegal immigrants when they worked for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1980s.

“He was a fine man, and a great American who loved his country,” said King, a former Border Patrol commander.

But to his critics, Ezell was a demagogic immigration foe who sought to use policy to resist rapid, and perhaps inevitable, changes in California’s population.

Many were particularly outraged when he left his INS post and set up a consulting business that, among other things, used an obscure immigration law to help wealthy foreign investors obtain U.S. residency.

For some immigrant advocates, particularly Latino activists, Ezell was seen as a man who manipulated racial antipathies but used his personal charisma to disarm allegations of racism.

“A lot of the things that he did got media attention but played on racist sentiments, which were channeled against immigrants,” said Linton Joaquin, director of litigation at the National Immigration Law Center.

But even Ezell’s critics conceded his considerable personal magnetism.

“He was very personable, very charming, and had a very outgoing personality,” said Peter Schey, director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and a co-counsel in the successful lawsuit blocking Proposition 187 and a sometimes debate foe of Ezell. “I think it’s just unfortunate that, under that charm and warm personality, were attitudes and beliefs that were extremely harmful to the immigrant and refugee communities.”

In both his government and non-government roles, Ezell was at the center of contentious debates about beefed-up border enforcement, granting amnesty for illegal immigrants, cutting public benefits to them and other immigration-related issues that made their way into the headlines.

However, despite his image as an immigrant-basher, Ezell always took pains to reassure often-leery illegal immigrants that the INS would not arrest them if they applied for amnesty at one of the dozens of centers set up for that purpose in 1987.

Always ready with a disarming quip, he clearly felt comfortable with the celebrity status that his immigration role brought to him. He was often provocative and seldom shied away from controversy.

“I think he did relish the role somewhat, but no one would like the kind of abuse he was forced to endure,” said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “I think it particularly became very vicious during the Proposition 187 campaign.”

In the early days of that 1994 campaign, Ezell was virtually booed off the stage during a debate at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.”They should call it the Museum of Intolerance,” Ezell told a reporter later.

He had many run-ins with the media, often dismissing the “liberal” press as fomenting stories making him look bad. But Ezell almost always returned reporters’ telephone calls, even from overseas, and never seemed to take bad press personally.

Though implementation of Proposition 187 was largely blocked by a federal judge, Ezell lived to see many of the positions that he espoused become part of official policy. Border Patrol staffing has more than doubled since Ezell began making his media tours of the U.S.-Mexico border zone in San Diego during the mid-1980s, dramatizing the need for more officers and equipment.

He was among the first to start the drumbeat against what he called an “invasion” of illegal immigrants--a position that is now largely recognized in U.S. policy.

Meanwhile, the sweeping 1996 immigration laws adopted many of the restrictions on public benefits for illegal immigrants that were part of Proposition 187.

Funeral services will be held Saturday.