RACIAL PROFILING CONCERNS EXTEND TO BORDER PATROL CHECKPOINTS

TEMECULA -- As thousands of commuters and holiday travelers funnel through
the Temecula Border Patrol checkpoint, agents watching for drug smugglers
and illegal immigrants have mere seconds to decide whether motorists merit
a more thorough inspection.

Driver too jumpy? Suspicious-looking suspension, too low to the ground or
jacked up to hide a heavy load?

Agents have developed personalized lists of red flags. But their bag of
tricks does not include racial profiling, border officials say. Patrol
policy, backed by recent court judgments, prohibits agents from targeting
drivers who "look Hispanic."

Inland-area Latinos give the Interstate 15 checkpoint mixed reviews.

But Sherry Feltner-Redondo, patrol agent in charge of the Temecula station,
said Friday her officers ignore ethnicity when deciding whether to divert
drivers into the secondary inspection and interview area.

"The No. 1 complaint I deal with is, `Why did you pull me over? I'm not
Hispanic, I don't look Hispanic,' " said Feltner-Redondo, whose husband is
a Latino Border Patrol agent.

Agents look for things out of the ordinary.

Checkpoints are vital to catching dangerous drug and immigrant smugglers,
well worth the traffic delays, said Raul-Mark Yarbrough, the Latino mayor
pro tem of Perris and a car dealer.

Though agents cannot use ethnic categories to target motorists, they can
use "foreign appearance" as a partial reason for closer inspection, said
Nicole Chulick, a Washington, D.C., spokeswoman for the Immigration and
Naturalization Service.

But judging by appearances can perpetuate stereotypes about Mexicans,
dark-skinned U.S.-born Latinos, people wearing backward baseball caps or
Western jeans and shirts, argued Enrique Lopez, a professor of ethnic
studies at California State University-San Bernardino.