Easing the Bottleneck at the Border

The government could ease waits at the Mexican border by expanding a program for frequent commuters that uses criminal background checks and high-tech vehicle screenings, said a group that promotes cross-border ties.

San Diego Dialogue said in a report distributed Thursday that about 312,000 frequent crossers, many of them U.S. citizens, account for 96% of entries at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa ports of entry into San Diego.

They could be screened in advance to give border inspectors more time for searching first-time or infrequent crossers who may be a higher security risk, the group said.

“The best security will also produce the best traffic management. The best way to keep the bad guys out is to make it easy for the good guys to get in,” the group’s director, Chuck Nathanson, said at a forum on the worsening delays since Sept. 11.

Nathanson was co-author of the report, which relied on the group’s 1994 study to gauge the number of frequent crossers. The ports at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa registered about 51.5 million entries last year.

Delays have long exasperated border residents who cross often for work, shopping and school. That has grown since the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs Service stepped up searches for potential terrorists and bombs.

Rush-hour delays have eased somewhat in recent weeks, to about an hour. But fewer people are crossing because of the delays. Businesses on both sides complain that reduced traffic is severely hurting sales.

Nathanson and others lauded an INS program, known as SENTRI and begun in San Ysidro last year, that reserves two commuter lanes for use by drivers who have undergone criminal checks and paid a $129 fee, which helps cover the program’s costs.

Enrolled cars are fitted with transponders, which signal computers at the inspection booths. By the time the car pulls up, a computer screen has flashed a photograph and key identifying information about enrolled occupants. The crossing generally takes less than a minute.

SENTRI, with only 12,000 subscribers, could be broadened to include many more frequent crossers, and a similar system could be set up for pedestrians, said San Diego Dialogue. The group also suggested lowering the enrollment fee.

Federal officials said it is unlikely that such a program would attract the tens of thousands of commuters needed to greatly reduce overall waits. Customs officials worry that expanding too fast could make the system more vulnerable to lapses in security.

But Adele J. Fasano, director of the INS’ San Diego office, agreed that technology that helps inspectors screen crossers is crucial. She cited the testing of high-tech identification cards that are embedded with radio transmitters to convey identifying information, plus advances in biometrics, which helps machines read faces.

Fasano said, though, that high-tech immigration documents could be 10 years away.

Meanwhile, business leaders and border politicians are pleading for relief from the lines and the resulting tumble in cross-border shopping.

Eugenio Elorduy Walther, the new governor of Baja California, said outside the lunch gathering Thursday that the United States and Mexico should each designate a point person for the traffic problem and to assess the need for more crossings.

Elorduy said he will raise the matter next week when Mexican President Vicente Fox visits Tijuana.