Crackdown on the border is paying off, officials say

McALLEN -- Border Patrol officials said Tuesday that it is too early to
pronounce Operation Rio Grande a success, but claimed a dramatic drop in
arrests of illegal immigrants is attributable to the unprecedented federal
buildup in South Texas that began in August.

Moreover, Border Patrol agents for the first time are confident that
Washington has given them adequate tools -- hundreds of new officers,
vehicles and an array of high-tech equipment -- to begin controlling a
notoriously porous and violent stretch of the Texas-Mexico border.
Shootouts with drug traffickers and immigrant smugglers are so common in
the McAllen sector that agents must wear bulletproof vests and carry
military assault rifles on the river.

"I'm very, very satisfied with what's going on, but it's going to take time
- -- it's a slow process," said Chief Joe Garza, who heads the McAllen
sector, which includes 282 miles along the Rio Grande.

The Border Patrol sector chief said crime has decreased in Brownsville, the
largest city in the Rio Grande Valley, a drop city police attribute to the
increased federal presence in city streets. Since the operation began,
arrests of illegal immigrants in the 17,000-square-mile sector have dropped
by as much as 5,400 a month, when compared with the same time in 1996.

However, Garza emphasized the operation has failed to shut down the
principal smuggling corridor on U.S. 77, used by an estimated 75 percent of
undocumented immigrants who cross the border. Smugglers operate safe houses
in and around the community of Raymondville, and walk their clients around
the Border Patrol's highway checkpoint farther north.

Garza said his Raymondville detail arrested 97 illegal immigrants Monday
night, and noted the arrest rate has dropped slightly so far this year.
Garza said that in the past, Border Patrol operations in his sector would
be launched and "two or three days later we would be out of gas, out of
time or out of money, and we'd have to go back to business as usual and the
smugglers would just wait us out."

Operation Rio Grande, launched in Brownsville last Aug. 25, has massed
hundreds of Border Patrol agents along the Rio Grande in traditional
crossing areas. The number of personnel has increased from 498 in 1995 to
849 today.

Along with the additional agents, 38 batteries of floodlights are trained
on the brush river banks, and a trio of long-range, low- light telescopes
have been mounted in strategic buildings and now scan the border.

"With Operation Rio Grande, we have changed our mindset," Garza said at a
Tuesday news briefing. "I think we have the will ... and the resources and
the support -- not only from the community, but from our own people, our
administration in Washington plus our Congress -- to take control of the
border."

Marijuana and cocaine seizures have increased since the operation got under
way as agents stop more vehicles driving away from the river and uncover
more drug caches along the border.

Meanwhile, immigration officials who are stationed at the Valley's
international bridges report a record number of immigrants using false
documents, including 67 arrested over New Year's weekend. Since the
operation began, 2,278 people using fraudulent or borrowed documents have
been arrested.

An Immigration and Naturalization Service official speculated that many of
those arrested were trying to avoid Operation Rio Grande.

But Operation Rio Grande has it critics, including immigration rights
groups. Activists say it has not cut down on the flow of illegals but has
been a boon to the "coyotes," as immigrant smugglers are known.

"Well, more than anything it is pushing people out west" into remote
brushlands up river, said Nathan Selzer, with the Valley Coalition for
Justice. "There is a concern if you push people away from the populated
areas, there will be more risks."

Garza, the Border Patrol sector chief, said there was not a single abuse
complaint during Operation Rio Grande that has been substantiated. However,
Selzer said his group is investigating five incidents including a man who
claims Border Patrol agents broke his arm after his arrest.

"What we've run into is a great reluctance of people to go forward to the
government with allegations of abuse ... there is very little faith they
won't be retaliated against," said Selzer, who works out of Harlingen.

Operation Rio Grande is the third intensive operation this decade by the
Border Patrol where agents are placed within sight of each other along the
border, and is similar in some respects to earlier efforts in El Paso and
San Diego. In all three instances, the operations have been popular with
merchants in border cities who have for years put up with shoplifters,
petty thieves and burglars who slip across the border to commit crimes.

"The Border Patrol presence downtown has contributed in a positive way to
decreasing the crime rate in Brownsville," said local police Lt. Henry
Etheridge.

"It runs the whole array. You have strong-arm robbers holding up people and
running back to Mexico, and at night we used to have burglars who broke
into businesses through the roofs. And that has decreased," he said.

As in El Paso, gone are the scruffy squads of Mexican youths who stationed
themselves on busy Brownsville intersections and washed windshields or
juggled balls, asking for a few coins in return.

Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle