Pubdate: Wednesday, July 28, 1999
Source: Associated Press
Copyright: 1999 Associated Press
Author: Ben Fox

ON SWELTERING BORDER, CRACKDOWN BLAMED FOR TENSION, SHOOTINGS

Calif. - Michael Singh drove along a darkened city
street, a few feet from the steel rail fence that
divides Mexico and the United States. The call of "shots fired"
crackled over his radio.

The call would be run of the mill in most U.S. cities. But Singh is a
watch commander for the Border Patrol, and his job is to catch illegal
immigrants, not investigate reports of shootings.

That's changing. Agents in Calexico are increasingly dodging bullets
as tension and desperation mount along the California border, where
arrests and deaths of illegal immigrants have skyrocketed over the
course of a five-year crackdown.

"We have to be on our guard because we don't know what we're going to
encounter out here," said Singh, who patrols a 26-mile stretch of
border near Calexico, a community of 28,000 ringed by alfalfa fields
and irrigation canals about 125 miles east of San Diego.

Not counting the call Singh heard, the Border Patrol has received
seven reports of shots fired at agents in the Calexico region so far
this year, including a recent night with three in one hour. No
injuries were reported. In all of last year, the agency received five
reports of shots. Authorities believe drug or immigrant smugglers,
frustrated by a crackdown that has all but closed a once reliable
route into the United States, are to blame.

"These are just isolated cases of smugglers reacting to the increased
patrols," said Carlos Luna Herrera, regional coordinator of Grupo
Beta, a Mexican border police unit created to protect migrants. "But
they are unusual."

When the call came in at 10:04 p.m., Singh made a quick U-turn, racing
to an open lot beside the 12-foot border fence, where the night glows
orange from high-powered, stadium-style lights. Ely Lopez, a
seven-year veteran of the patrol, was already there in his bulletproof
vest. He had heard at least three shots from Colonia Puerto Nuevo, a
poor neighborhood in Mexicali, the city of 1 million that sprawls
along the other side of the border.

Singh called Grupo Beta, which agreed to send a patrol. But quiet had
returned and an arrest was unlikely.

Crossing illegally at Calexico used to be much easier. In 1996, 81
agents were assigned to the area, with perhaps only a handful working
at night, a popular crossing time for migrants trying to avoid daytime
temperatures that can reach 110 degrees.

"We had groups of 150 rushing us and we had only six or seven agents
working at a time," Singh recalled.

Now, 194 agents work in the area, including about 40 at night using
motion detectors and night-vision scopes.

The agents apprehended 9,908 migrants in June, more than twice the
number caught the same month in 1996. Arrests hit an all-time high in
March, with 19,908. The vigilance is costly. Last year, 145 people
died trying to enter California illegally compared to only about 23
before the U.S. crackdown known as Operation Gatekeeper began in 1994,
said Roberto Martinez, director of the Border Project of the American
Friends Service Committee.

The program has forced border crossers into remote, dangerous regions
such as the cold mountains of eastern San Diego County, where eight
people froze to death in an April snowstorm, and the All-American
Canal, an 82-mile waterway that runs through the Calexico area where
10 migrants have drowned this year. In May, a Calexico Border Patrol
agent was accused of firing a pellet gun at a raft carrying three
immigrants across the canal, causing it to flip. Two migrants made it
to shore but the third was never found. The case remains under
investigation.

"It's gotten more desperate for both the immigrants and the
smugglers," Martinez said. "And I think we are going to see it
increase as they add more agents."
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