New INS Plan Puts Checkpoint on 24-Hour Call

SAN CLEMENTE —  Long the bane of commuters in Southern California, the San Clemente immigration checkpoint is once again redefining itself.

After reports that the government might close the checkpoint permanently, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is suddenly reviewing the mission of inland checkpoints as a way of helping staunch illegal immigration.

The latest proposal--which appears to have the backing of both the Clinton administration and such recent close-the-checkpoint crusaders as Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside)--is for the Border Patrol to stop traffic 24 hours a day, with an undetermined number of new agents being added for enforcement.

The measure has yet to become law because it’s part of the budget war being waged between the White House and congressional Republicans. But at this point, it has the benefit of bipartisan support, which, in itself, represents a shift in philosophy.

Until recently, Packard had been outspoken in calling for a complete shutdown of the 72-year-old checkpoint and redeploying all Border Patrol agents to the international border, 69 miles south of San Clemente. The checkpoint itself sits on northbound Interstate 5, three miles south of here.

But late last year, Packard announced an agreement with INS Commissioner Doris Meissner in which he rededicated his efforts to beefing up enforcement at the border while calling for more stringent measures at the checkpoint itself.

In a statement issued Friday, the congressman called for the following: Agents checking cars around the clock and year round, more traffic lanes to help ease traffic and a prohibition against high-speed chases in the area by law enforcement agencies that have resulted in numerous deaths.

Checkpoint opponents have included San Clemente civic officials, who say that high-speed chases have killed motorists and pedestrians in southern Orange County; civil libertarians, who say the overwhelming number of motorists detained as suspects are Latino; and commuters, who say traffic tie-ups and accidents as making the trek to work needlessly unpleasant.

For such critics, the thought of a continuously operating checkpoint is hardly welcome news.

“This has to be the only country in the world that chooses to defend an international border from [66] miles away,” said Steve Apodaca, San Clemente’s mayor.

Apodaca said that, though high-speed chases now end at the Orange County border, that doesn’t mean suspected illegal immigrants slow down immediately. Rather, they often speed along surface streets in San Clemente and Dana Point.

“High-speed chases are no longer a daily problem [here], but it only takes one to ruin someone’s life,” Apodaca said.

William S. King, executive vice president of Americans Against Illegal Immigration, called the mayor’s criticisms absurd, saying opposition to high-speed chases “doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Somewhere along the line, we have to make up our minds about what’s important,” King said. “I’ve talked to individual rank-and-file agents, who say we’re blowing it because they can no longer pursue” suspects into Orange County.

In September 1994, the Clinton administration took the unprecedented step of temporarily closing the facility as part of a five-month test to redeploy 93 checkpoint officers to the U.S.-Mexican border. Packard and others had called for a blockade along the border between San Diego and Tijuana. Such a tactic has proved particularly effective in the Rio Grande River area in Texas.

The INS now appears to be wanting both--beefed-up enforcement along the border and round-the-clock inspections at all inland checkpoints. Just last week, officials announced that 300 additional officers were in place along the border and at various airports and inland checkpoints throughout California.

“We’ve always maintained that checkpoints play a vital role in our enforcement,” Mark Moody, a patrol spokesman, said Friday. Moody noted that, in fiscal 1995, the agency apprehended 19,944 illegal immigrants at the San Clemente checkpoint.

In fiscal 1994, the agency caught 30,692 illegal immigrants in San Clemente. Moody credited beefed-up enforcement for the decrease.

On Wednesday night, agents arrested 30 illegal immigrants who were riding in a secret compartment in the rear of a bobtail truck. On Thursday night, Moody said, agents seized 140 pounds of marijuana stashed in a “hidden compartment” of an automobile’s trunk.

“It shows you the lengths people are going to these days,” he added, “but it also shows you why we need to maintain the San Clemente checkpoint.”