Border agents irked at order to end stops on city streets

From: "KD Weber" wvadreamin@citlink.net>
Border agents irked at order to end stops on city streets

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/thu/news/news_1n14agents.html

Border agents irked at order to end stops on city streets

By Gregory Alan Gross
STAFF WRITER
August 14, 2003
A directive barring Border Patrol agents from stopping suspected illegal
immigrants on city streets is throwing the 1,600 San Diego-area agents into
turmoil.
The directive, contained in an internal memo last week from William T. Veal,
Border Patrol chief in San Diego, said "agents are not authorized to conduct
any interior enforcement or city patrol operations in or near residential
areas or places of employment."
The directive resulted from a series of recent, highly publicized incidents,
the best-known of which occurred Aug. 2, when a Mexican family of five on
their way to the Mexican Consulate was stopped by Border Patrol agents
within a block of their destination.
When they couldn't prove they were legally in the United States, they were
arrested and sent back to Mexico within hours.
The consulate filed a formal complaint with the Border Patrol the same day.
Veal's directive was issued six days later.
"We have a continuing obligation to prevent any public perception that the
Border Patrol may be conducting 'neighborhood sweeps,' " according to the
memo.
Agents will still be able to check public transportation for illegal
immigrants, but only at stations or aboard the vehicles themselves, not in
surrounding neighborhoods.
Reaction from agents to the directive was swift and fiercely negative.
"Dear God, it's unbelievable. It's insanity," said Agent Joe Dassaro, head of
Local 1613 of the National Border Patrol Council.
"This is the lowest I've ever seen our morale," said Shawn Moran, the
union's communications director. "Guys feel like they're being ordered not
to do the job they swore to do."
Yesterday, Javier Diaz, deputy consul general at the consulate, said the
directive "sounds like something very much in line with concerns both
countries have with the safe and orderly repatriation of persons back into
Mexico."
"When raids are done in the streets, people are suddenly separated from
their families, from their property," Diaz said. "They're suddenly placed on
the streets of border cities like Tijuana, where they have no family and
nowhere to go."
The order has revived a long-running debate within the Border Patrol over
immigration enforcement in the interior of the country versus the emphasis
on heavy patrolling of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Agents yesterday said they sometimes catch five or six times as many illegal
immigrants in cities during random transit checks or answering police calls
for help as they do patrolling the border.
Moran said the order effectively bars agents from stopping to talk to
suspected illegal immigrants, even if they recognize them as criminals who
have been deported in the past.
"If we're going down the street and we see somebody we've deported for child
molestation or some other crime, even if they're walking down the street
holding some child's hand, there's nothing we can do about it," he said.
But agents said they had little choice except to obey.
The union urged agents to contact their congressional representatives to
complain, but said Veal's order is legal and urged its members to follow it.
At the same time, the union acknowledged that some agents might ignore the
order.
"Some stations aren't even giving this policy out to their people," Dassaro
said. "One station keeps taking it down off the bulletin board so nobody can
see it."
A spokesman for Veal said the directive was nothing more than a reminder to
agents of long-standing policies applied nationwide.
"Border Patrol policy is not made at the field or local level," the
spokesman said. "It's made at the highest levels in Washington, D.C."
The word circulating among agents yesterday was that "interior enforcement"
of immigration policy is to be left to ICE, the Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.
ICE is an arm of the new Department of Homeland Security, formed after the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. However, its role in enforcing
immigration law is narrowly defined, said Mike Turner, ICE special agent in
charge in San Diego.
"Our focus is on human-smuggling issues, organized smuggling efforts,"
Turner said, declining to comment specifically on the Veal directive.
If ICE agents come across illegal immigrants while tracking down immigrant
smugglers, they will detain them, Turner said, "but that is not our focus."
A spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, said the congressman wanted
clarification on the memo before commenting.
Immigrations-rights activists said the memo was tantamount to an admission
that Border Patrol agents had been acting outside their own guidelines.
"They had become quite rash," said Claudia Smith of the California Rural
Legal Assistance Foundation. "You were having agents stopping people based
just on their Mexican appearance."