Fence, Border Patrol Threats Cast Shadow on Neighboring Towns

JACUMBA, Calif. —  The new border fence slices through the desert hills like some rusting, corrugated version of the Great Wall of China. It most obviously divides the United States and Mexico, but also puts a wall between the Severance family, Pete and Jeri, and the Gallegos, Raul and Leandra.

For now, it’s fine for all concerned. A couple of times a week, Leandra Gallego, a trim, dignified woman of 66 whose home sits about 10 yards inside Mexico, hops the fence at its lowest point and goes to work cleaning the home of the Severances, who sit about 10 yards inside the United States.

But if the U.S. Border Patrol follows through with threats to prohibit such crossings--well, the people of Jacumba, Calif., population 400, and Jacume, Mexico, about the same size, will have a big problem with that.

If it’s true that all politics is local, Jacumba (pronounced hah-coom-bah) and Jacume (hah-coo-may) provide an extreme example. Here, the issue of illegal immigration, a vexing one for Americans everywhere, is cast in decidedly personal terms.

So far, immigration has not emerged as a major issue in the presidential campaign, perhaps because President Clinton is nearly as conservative a guardian of the border as Republican Bob Dole indicates he would be. Clinton has overseen a huge increase in the budget of the Border Patrol and has called for doubling its forces in the next four years. Under his watch, the Border Patrol has launched Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego--and built the Jacumba fence.

For generations, the people of Jacumba and Jacume, on either side of the border about 75 miles southeast of San Diego, have crossed back and forth as if the two countries were, in fact, neighbors.

People in Jacume would cross each day to work and shop in the United States. People in Jacumba would cross--less often, to be sure--to visit friends and family in Mexico.

They still do, but now there is the fence. It runs about three miles through dry, rugged hills and across the valley the two towns share. In the hills, it stands 10 feet high and consists of solid sheets of corrugated steel. In the valley, where flood waters can surge, it consists of steel fence posts crossed by a single line of railroad ties, set at about thigh level.

If there’s a typical opinion of the fence, it might be the one expressed by Jose Rangel, a Jacumba resident and U.S. citizen who spent his early years in Jacume. His twin brother still lives there.

Rangel stands in the front yard of his new, double-wide mobile home, watering a profusion of morning glories, roses, irises and zinnias. He is a thick-set, slow-moving man whose broad, tanned face is shaded by a baseball cap. He speaks with an air of disgust.

“They’re not going to stop nobody anyway,” he says. He bends the hose in half until the stream slows to a trickle. Squinting in the afternoon sun, he asks: “Why do they want to stop me if I’m a U.S. citizen and I want to go see my brother?”

Immigration is a gut-level issue for many Americans, but few regard it quite so personally as the people of Jacumba. Still, a highly unscientific sampling of local opinion suggests that people here generally agree with Americans on immigration issues.

A national poll by Associated Press found Americans almost evenly divided over measures to crack down on illegal immigration. One in three said they have a great deal of concern about illegal immigration, but voters were more closely divided on proposals to deny citizenship, health benefits and education to the children of illegal immigrants. Overall, voters thought Clinton would do a better job than Dole of dealing with immigration.

Few people here, on either side of the border, are happy about the flood of illegal immigrants from central and southern Mexico who have poured through this area since Operation Gatekeeper began pushing the aspiring migrants farther east.

There are grumblings about drug smugglers, and a general dismay about strangers who have violated the cozy atmosphere of small-town life. Few people believe the Border Patrol is effective; most see the border fence here as a boondoggle. But nobody seems to think presidential politics has much to do with it.

Jose Rangel says he’ll probably vote for Clinton, but not necessarily because of the president’s position on immigration. Rangel, 45, born in the United States to Mexican farm workers, agrees with Dole that the children of illegal immigrants don’t belong in U.S. public schools.

“If they’ve got no papers, why should I pay taxes for somebody to go to school?” he asks.

This, the one immigration issue on which Clinton and Dole sharply disagree, also divides the people of Jacumba.

Historically, the Jacumba Elementary School accepted children from across the border--children like the young Jose Rangel. But a few years ago, school district administrators put a stop to the practice, saying only residents of Jacumba--of whatever citizenship--could attend the Jacumba school. At the time, there were 13 students from Mexico attending.

Susan Barry, the principal, remembers the day the new policy was announced. “We all sat down on the playground and cried,” she says. Then she went to work finding homes in Jacumba for her Mexican students. Ten of the 13 moved across the border and stayed in school.

Like Barry, many people here recoil at the thought of denying children an education because their parents are illegal immigrants.

“This is as sick as the human animal gets,” fumes Richard Spencer, who ran a mental health center in the Los Angeles area before retiring in 1985. He lived for eight years in Jacume before moving across the border to a renovated home in Jacumba. His politics are to the left of Clinton’s, and he said he will vote for the president only reluctantly.

Dole has supporters here, too, among them Pete and Jeri Severance.

The Severances, like their neighbors, the Gallegos, seem to have found paradise on earth amid the clumps of cacti and roaming herds of burros. They live in a sumptuous hilltop ranch house draped in wisteria and shaded by sentries of cypress trees. While hummingbirds flit about the patio, the Severances, who are retired, sit on easy chairs and talk about the illegal immigrants who used to use their garden hose for bathing, but don’t anymore because the fence has pushed their crossing a few dozen yards down the road.

“It sends the aliens that way and it sends them this way,” Jeri Severance says happily, crisscrossing her arms.

Her husband weighs in on the education issue. “I don’t think they’re entitled to a damn thing, not until they’re legal,” he says. But he wonders what would happen to California farmers if they couldn’t hire illegal immigrants to pick their crops. And both he and his wife worry that the Border Patrol will stop letting people--people like Leandra Gallego, their housekeeper--cross the fence.

The Border Patrol is adamant: It will increase patrols in the Jacumba area, and it will arrest anyone who crosses the fence, regardless of citizenship. The nearest port of entry is Tecate, a 1 1/2-hour round-trip from Jacume or Jacumba, and that is where people will have to cross.

Raul and Leandra Gallego have been crossing the border here, off and on, for 50 years. Like many people, they keep a car on each side of the border fence, one for Mexico, one for the United States. Raul Gallego believes the United States should control its border, and he sides with the most conservative Americans when it comes to illegal immigrants. They have no rights, he says, and should be sent home.

He wouldn’t mind the fence, he says, except that it funnels illegal immigrants--and drug smugglers and local hoodlums--to the point where the solid fence gives way to the low band of railroad ties, which happens to be right near his house. Some days, 50 or more people are huddled under the bushes in front of the Gallegos’ house, waiting for an immigrant-smuggler--a “coyote”--to take them across.

Then, too, Gallego worries about the prospect that this fence, and the policies it represents, will divide these towns forever.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t like this fence, but there’s nothing I can do.”