'OPERATION GATEKEEPER' DRIVES WEDGE BETWEEN BORDER TOWNS

JACUMBA, Calif. -- There's an old photograph from the 1930s hanging in Felix
Bachmeier's dark hotel lobby that offers a glimpse of what this tiny hamlet
was like in its glory days.

It's a fading shot of Jacumba's main street, crowded with dozens of polished
touring cars parked in front of a large, rambling hotel. The artesian
springs used to make this high desert town east of San Diego a popular
weekend and vacation spot, before air conditioning and the development of
Palm Springs lured the tourists away.

But when the the locals talk wistfully about the good old days, they don't
mean the 1930s. They're talking about a couple of years ago, before a highly
publicized border crackdown drove a wedge between Jacumba and Jacume -- its
tiny sister city across the Mexican border.

The old hotel burned down years ago, and Jacumba's population is only about
400 now. Many of the town's residents live here because they seem to prefer
the beauty and isolation of the mountains.

Jacume and Jacumba are close to nothing but each other. You can stand on the
U.S. town's main street and see the rooftops of its neighboring community
across a narrow valley. If Jacumba is small, Jacume is even more humble -- a
settlement populated by descendants of Mexican workers who built the
aqueduct between Tecate and Mexicali, and then simply stayed.

"The old stagecoach used to run through here and over to Mexico," mused
George Bellon, a U.S. citizen who keeps about 50 head of cattle at his
weekend place in Jacume. "These two areas have been sister cities since time
immemorial."

The residents of Jacume would cross to go to church in Jacumba, or to pick
up mail (there's no postal service in the Mexican town). The residents of
Jacumba would cross to visit friends and family in Jacume. The border was
just a worn spot in the landscape, marked by a battered wire fence that the
locals ignored.

But then came the border crackdown known as "Operation Gatekeeper." The
major infusion of surveillance and manpower, backed by a border fence, put
the pressure on the 10-mile line just south of San Diego, the busiest
crossing point between the United States and Mexico.

But when the Border Patrol started putting the squeeze on San Diego in 1994,
the stream of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers moved east into the
Imperial Valley and began coming through Jacume and Jacumba, sometimes at
the rate of hundreds per night.

You can still see the evidence of what hotelier Bachmeier refers to as "the
wild days." At the traditional crossing spot between the towns, a makeshift
taco stand sits abandoned -- testament to the crowds of people who would use
the clearing as a staging area, waiting for dark before charging across the
border in groups too large for the original eight Jacumba-area Border Patrol
agents to handle.

"That town was devastated by this," groused Jacumba resident Bob Mitchell,
nodding toward Jacume. "It wasn't much more than a church with a circuit
priest and a cafe. When the coyotes and drug smugglers came .. the whole
town was traumatized by the presence of mafioso."

"Operation Gatekeeper" eventually followed the illegal immigrant traffic to
Jacumba, and the region got more Border Patrol agents -- raising the force
to 30, then 73. And the crackdown also brought the symbol the locals have
come to hate -- a metal fence along sections of the border.

"It's an ugly blight," Mitchell said.

The majority of illegal immigrants and smugglers have moved again, even
farther east, and things have been much quieter for the last six months. But
the Border Patrol still apprehends about 65 people a day along the 10-mile
line that stretches through the small towns.

And the rules have changed.

Now a Border Patrol vehicle parks on the hill looking down at the
traditional crossing, and U.S. citizens are frequently stopped and warned
that they are not supposed to cross. The local Border Patrol supervisory
agent says they don't have the manpower to haul every scofflaw American to
San Diego for processing.

But the stakes are higher for their Mexican counterparts. Jacume residents
and Mexican nationals who live legally in Jacumba are stopped and told they
must make a long drive to cross at either the Tecate or Mexicali port of
entry or face possible revocation of their residency or work status.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, a Border Patrol agent watched from a hill as
San Diego estate planner Jim Westbrook's wife dropped him off. He stepped
over the fence, only slightly more than knee-high (to block vehicular
traffic), and walked to the Humvee he had parked on the Mexico side. He
climbed in and made the short, rough drive up the hill to his weekend house
in Jacume.

The Border Patrol agent would wave him down as he came back across to the
U.S. side about an hour later, reminding him that he was not supposed to
cross there.

"We're not opposed to the Border Patrol," Westbrook said. "But when the
(Mexican) people from Jacumba and Jacume go across, they're going to see
families -- they're not running north."

Westbrook and his wife got a couple hundred signatures on a petition to Sen.
Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., in May, asking if there was not some remedy
available for their community. Feinstein's office responded that there was
nothing she could do, he said.

So people like Mario Ramirez are stymied. He lives in Jacume with his wife
and two children, but he has worked, legally, for nearly a decade in
Bachmeier's small hotel. In the old days, Ramirez would get up and come
across the border to work.

But now, he's forced to drive 2 1/2 hours out of his way, west to Tecate,
through the legal border crossing there, then back east to Jacumba. He's
pursuing U.S. citizenship and says he can't risk losing it by getting caught
crossing illegally, no matter how inconvenient the drive is.

So he stays in Jacumba at least three days a week, then takes a couple days
off and drives the long way home to spend a couple of days with his family,
then makes the long drive back and works for about three more days.

"It's terrible, but we don't have no choice," Ramirez said.

And Ramirez isn't the only one who thinks the commute is ludicrous.

"The last time I crossed through Tecate, an officer was asking me, `Where
are you going?' " Ramirez said. "I said, `To Jacumba. I have a job there.'

"He said, `Where are you coming from?' I said from Jacume. And he said,
`Jacume? Why don't you go through there?' "

The border officer suggested that what Ramirez and his neighbors need is a
small, pedestrian border crossing like the kind found in several towns in
Arizona and Texas.

"Believe me, the local people on either side would vouch for the honesty of
the (crossings)," Bachmeier said. "Like, someone comes with me to my place,
you don't have to worry about it."

In Lukeville, Ariz., the pedestrian border crossing is only open about eight
hours a day, an Immigration and Naturalization spokeswoman said. It's
staffed by either an INS agent or a customs agent who rotate the duty, said
spokeswoman Eileen Schmidt.

But any new port of entry, no matter how small, has to be approved by
Congress, and there's no legislation pending that would help the residents
of Jacumba and Jacume. A spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, who
represents Jacumba, said the congressman is sympathetic to the problem, but
that creating any new port of entry is a function of economics.

Bachmeier said he's lost some business from Mexican citizens as a result of
the crackdown, but what he grieves is the division of his community.

"People like myself go (to Jacume) for a baptism, go for a wedding,"
Bachmeier said. "They have a cemetery over there -- we even buried an
American friend of ours in Mexico. When you think of that, it hurts a little
bit, you know?"

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst