Crash Kills INS Agent on Border Patrol Call

A veteran immigration agent was killed Thursday when his car collided with a semitrailer as he sped toward a truckload of suspected illegal immigrants.

John Orellana, 51, an anti-smuggling agent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had been based in Santa Ana but was working the Salton City area in Imperial County in response to a dramatic increase in immigrant smuggling.

Orellana was responding to a call for backup from a Border Patrol agent when the patrol car collided with the 18-wheeler about 2 a.m. The crash occurred at the intersection of State Routes 86 and 22, about 70 miles north of El Centro, said CHP Officer Roland Pritchard.

Orellana was dead on arrival at Pioneers Memorial Hospital in nearby Brawley.

It was not immediately clear how fast either vehicle was traveling. A CHP team is investigating the crash, but no citation had been issued by late Thursday. No one in the truck was injured, Pritchard said.

Orellana was responding to a “frantic” call from a Border Patrol agent who had stopped a pickup truck of suspected illegal immigrants, Pritchard said. More than a dozen passengers had reportedly jumped out of the truck and were scattering. No one who fled was caught, said INS spokesman Bill Strassberger.

Since border enforcement was stepped up near San Diego three years ago, smugglers increasingly have used the Imperial Valley to move immigrants north, Strassberger said.

In the last week alone, agents stopped three semitrailers in the area, each holding more than 100 suspected illegal immigrants.

To counter the trend, Orellana and other INS agents were sent to El Centro in October for temporary duty, while an additional 100 agents were trained to work the area.

Orellana, who lived in Corona with his wife, Aura, and three children, had been with the INS for more than 20 years. He began his career as a Border Patrol agent in San Diego in 1975. He also served as an immigration inspector and examiner before starting work as a special agent in 1992.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

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Times staff writer Bonnie Hayes contributed to this report.