Effectiveness of Alien Busing to Be Studied

U.S. Border Patrol officials Friday completed a controversial two-week program of busing Mexican illegal immigrants from San Diego to the desert town of San Luis, Ariz., but have not evaluated the effectiveness of the program in deterring illegal immigration.

Officials and business leaders in San Luis, about 25 miles south of Yuma, Ariz., said they were not aware of any crime problems caused by the daily release of a busload of illegal immigrants in their border area. They added, however, that they still do not intend to be a “dumping ground for someone else’s problems.”

On May 9 the Border Patrol began sending two busloads of illegal immigrants daily from San Diego to San Luis, a town of about 3,000 residents, and to nearby Andrade, Calif. (population 800), to “relieve pressure” on the San Diego border area and discourage future illegal entries.

About 90 men were bused east each day, then released into Mexico.

John Belluardo, a spokesman for the regional headquarters of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles, said INS officials would evaluate the program in the next few weeks to see if it should be continued.

“We will figure out if apprehensions dropped in San Diego, if they picked up in Arizona, and if the program was cost effective,” Belluardo said.

San Luis Police Chief Eddie Jenkins said he did not notice a rise in crime during the two weeks, as some merchants had feared. When the program began, Vice Mayor Elias Bermudez predicted the illegal immigrants would “come to the U.S. and rob purses and strong-arm people.”

Jenkins said he tracked some of the Mexicans across the border into San Luis Rio Colorado, and found that “about half of them went to the bus station and bought tickets back to Tijuana.” The other half went to a park, possibly to await nightfall and another attempt to enter the United States.

A Border Patrol official in Yuma said he did not notice an increase in apprehensions of illegal aliens in the two-week period compared to the same period last year.

San Luis Mayor Antonio Reyes, still angry that the INS began the busing program without consulting or warning him first, called the program “asinine” and said it is “ridiculous” to think it would work.

“People out there sitting at a desk somewhere high up say, ‘Let’s try this.’ They think it’s new and they have to prove they’re doing their job. But they have tried this relocation before. I remember when they were shipping people back to Mazatlan. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now,” Reyes said.

Reyes and the 37-member San Luis Chamber of Commerce appealed to their congressmen to oppose the program. In response, Reyes said, he received a copy of a May 16 letter from Rep. Morris Udall (D-Ariz.) to INS Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell calling for an end to the busing, which “shifts the problem of illegal immigration from Southern California to southern Arizona.”

In the letter, Udall writes, “according to my information, no one, including the Arizona congressional delegation, INS officials in Arizona and, most importantly, local officials in San Luis, was informed in advance.”

Udall, like Reyes, said that the program had increased “tensions and distrust” along the border.

Reyes pointed also to the INS vehicle searches at the border last February when officials were trying to pressure Mexico to intensify the search for drug agent Enrique Camarena, who had disappeared.

“They establish policy that affects us locally without the slightest hint that they are going to do something,” Reyes said. “It creates economic hardship and makes our relations with people across the border more difficult.”

INS spokesman Joe Flanders said that, because of time constrictions, it is normal practice for INS officials to make decisions at the regional level without consulting city officials at the border.

Reyes said he believes it is difficult to judge the impact of the busing on his town.

“If there were burglaries or shoplifting, how do we prove who did it?” he said. He added that he fears that the presence of added illegal aliens in the area could encourage border bandits of the sort who prey on aliens along the Tijuana-San Diego border.