Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Section: Sec. 1, page 1
Contact:  http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Pubdate:  Mon, 13 Jul 1998
Author:  Douglas Holt

KILLINGS SPOTLIGHT GROWING DANGER FOR BORDER PATROL

HARLINGEN, Texas -- In the South Texas heat outside a funeral home,
grim-faced U.S. Border Patrol agents loaded the powder-blue casket of a
fallen colleague into a hearse, its small, hood-mounted American flags
flapping.

Ricardo Salinas, 24, had been in the Border Patrol only six months when he
was gunned down last week in an ambush that also resulted in the death of
his partner, Susan Rodriguez, 28, a six-year veteran.

In the dusty, crime-plagued, no man's land of the border, the shooting of
the federal officers set off a shock wave that rolled from South Texas to
Washington. On Friday, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, Immigration and
Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner and Border Patrol Chief
Gus De La Vina flew in to attend the agents' funerals.

Among rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, the killings were a reminder of
just how dangerous and unpredictable their job can be in a region that is
as harsh as its deadly heat.

"That call is a call any one of us could have taken," said Senior Border
Patrol Agent Blane Upton, one of hundreds of agents assigned to guard a
trash-strewn landscape in Brownsville, Texas, where a beefed-up border
presence has taken shape on the banks of the winding Rio Grande. "The first
thing I think about is my daughter. She's 7. I want her to have a daddy as
long as she needs one."

As the U.S. boosts efforts to control drug trafficking and illegal
immigration across the 1,900-mile frontier with Mexico, those attempting to
jump the border have responded with bolder strategies that put themselves
and border authorities at greater risk.

In all, 81 Border Patrol agents have been killed while on duty, eight in
the last two years. Those numbers don't reflect the number of close calls.
On average, there is one assault of a federal officer somewhere along the
border each day, said U.S. Customs spokeswoman Layne Lathram.

Meanwhile, about 400 illegal immigrants per year die trying to enter the
U.S. from Mexico, according to a University of Houston study.

"It has gotten rougher," said Eugene Montez, 37, a supervisory Border
Patrol agent who said he has been shot at 10 times during his 11-year
career. "People are more desperate, especially the drug runners. We're
hitting them so hard, they're more likely to fight for their dope."

In the violent world of the border, few were surprised last July when a key
witness in a federal drug case was killed, leaving the case in shambles and
seven people acquitted. More notable was the postscript: Authorities
convicted two men this year for arranging the hit.

In federal court last week in Brownsville, three men were charged in a
sealed indictment with conspiracy to use biological "weapons of mass
destruction" after issuing e-mail threats to federal and state officials.
Two years ago, an obstetrician in McAllen, Texas, was killed in what
authorities said appeared to be a contract hit ordered by a Mexican drug
trafficker who was angered when his wife died after childbirth.

Although drug smuggling in the 1980s was dominated by Colombians, U.S.
officials for years have blamed the rise of billionaire Mexican druglords
for putting more than half of the cocaine smuggled into the country over
the southwest border.

As crime has increased, along with increased concern about undocumented
immigration, law enforcement on the border has boomed. Money continues to
pour in from Washington, and signs of newly found resources are visible
along the banks of the Rio Grande.

In six years, the federal government has tripled the Border Patrol's budget
and similarly boosted budgets for the INS and Customs Service. Millions
have been spent to make the border bristle with fences, underground motion
sensors and night-vision scopes.

Air-conditioned skyboxes - -one-man portable lookout towers painted black
- -- allow agents to observe up to a mile away from 20-foot perches above
dun-colored grass. At night, portable floodlights with puttering generators
bathe the river in light. Others point northward along milo and cotton
fields that serve as trails to roads where pickup cars await.

In Brownsville, the Border Patrol parking lot overflows with cars,
including new white and kelly green-striped Ford Expeditions. Most agents
are working six-day weeks and collecting overtime until more agents arrive.
Two miles north of the border, on the roof of a 14-story nursing home
called Villa del Sol, a Border Patrol agent scans the river with a
high-powered night-vision telescope.

A town of 135,000 set in the humid coastal plains, Brownsville is typical
of many border communities, with a lethargic economy, an unemployment rate
of 11 percent and some of the nation's poorest and least educated people.
Here, by far the highest-paying employer is the federal government.

The hopeful phrase "Keep Brownsville Beautiful" greets visitors. It is
emblazoned on a rusting, stained hulk of a water tower that seems to
contradict the message. Surrounding downtown are neighborhoods of shacks on
cinder blocks, where bougainvillea is in bloom but junk sits in yards.
Although maps still identify a place called Amigoland Theme Park, pipe
dreams of a footbridge from Mexico and roller coasters on the Rio Grande
are long gone. It's now a shopping center.

As the sun set and generators from Border Patrol floodlights kicked in,
Montez told the story of how he recently pulled over a pickup truck loaded
with 20 undocumented immigrants, lying like logs in the cargo hold, with
lighter people laid across them and eight or so crammed into the truck's
front and back seats. In the past, such encounters were generally peaceful
as the immigrants knew they soon would be free to try again.

When the passengers fled, Montez said he began grabbing some and
handcuffing them until one passenger jumped him. "He was socking and
punching and kicking," Montez said. "I finally got him off me and had one
chance to call for backup."

Since Operation Rio Grande, a border crackdown that started last August and
resembles programs in El Paso, Arizona and California, the streets of
Brownsville have been largely wiped clean of "chicleros," the child beggars
offering Chiclets and other small items for sale; fruit jugglers;
carwashers; and prostitutes who would cross the border daily to ply their
trades. But in a pattern seen all along the border, there are fewer
shoppers too.

"Every time we put tougher restrictions on the border, that makes it less
attractive for folks to come over and shop," said Rick Luna of the
Brownsville Economic Development Council.

The tilt toward tougher law enforcement also can scare off potential
companies looking to relocate, he said. "We get investors from out of town
and they think they're entering a military zone."

Human-rights advocates say the U.S. government's efforts do nothing to
address the economic misery that drives most immigrants to attempt crossing
illegally. They also say the policy has predictably increased the number of
undocumented immigrants who die in remote deserts and mountains as they try
to avoid heavily patrolled areas.

"The goal of the Border Patrol is to force them into areas where they're
easier to arrest," said Roberto Martinez, director of the California-based
U.S. Mexico Border Program of the American Friends Service Committee. "They
know these people are going to die out there."

Along the California border, 60 undocumented immigrants have died this
year, double the number at this time last year, he said.

The stakes have been raised for law-enforcement officers too. Although
lights and fences appear to have reduced the number of random assaults from
bored teenagers, smugglers are now more apt to fight, immigration service
spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt said.

In Potrero Canyon, west of the dirt-poor border town of Nogales, Ariz., the
new dynamics appeared at work last month. Border Patrol Agent Alexander
Kirpnick, 27, and his partner came upon five men carrying backpacks stuffed
with marijuana--the sort of small load often abandoned in the past. As four
of the men sat down to be arrested, a fifth fired on Kirpnick, striking him
in the head and killing him. The "mules," as low-level drug couriers are
called, fled.

The number of federal border officers is one reason Rodriguez and Salinas
wound up responding to a domestic dispute miles from the border and far
removed from the usual Border Patrol fare of drug traffickers and
undocumented immigrants.

Although 2,200 Border Patrol agents are to be assigned to South Texas by
year's end, Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio said he has 30 uniformed
officers at his disposal to patrol a sparsely populated, 1,270-square-mile
area.

The killings Tuesday started when the agents responded to a call for backup
from Cameron County sheriff's deputies and police searching for a man who,
in a haze of drugs and alcohol, killed a 53-year-old woman and her daughter.

After the gunman, Ernest Moore, 24, managed to lose deputies in a car
chase, the Border Patrol agents joined in to check out where he was
living--with his parents in a ranch house set on a dirt road amid cotton
and cornfields, a deer skull mounted on a chain-link fence.

As the agents left the parents' home, their guns put away after concluding
the gunman wasn't home, Moore stepped out from a stand of wild sunflowers
and opened fire with an assault rifle before being fatally shot.

"It's a waste," Border Patrol Supervisory Agent Herb Monette said. "It
apparently was emotions gone astray, and five people are dead because of
it."

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