Border Delays Are Back to Normal as Agencies End Feud

SAN YSIDRO â€”  The delays in entering the United States from Mexico returned to “normalâ€� last week, as U.S. immigration authorities posted additional personnel at the inspection booths on the U.S. side and officials from two often-conflicting federal agencies vowed to cooperate more closely in monitoring the border traffic problem.

But despite those moves, motorists seeking to enter the United States at San Ysidro typically waited at least a half an hour last week, once again forced into wasting fuel, burning clutches, breathing foul exhausts and fraying nerves. U.S. officials called waits of up to 45 minutes “acceptable� and “normal� and offered no guarantees that the delays would not soon expand once again to more than an hour.

While certainly an improvement compared to the two-hour delays of previous weeks, the half-hour waits seemed less than acceptable to many motorists. And while as many as 18 lanes were open entering the United States, at least six lanes remained closed, increasing the frustrations of motorists.

“They need to have more lanes open, especially during rush hours,� said Alfonso Bustamante Jr., president of the Tijuana Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Bustamante’s complaint is a common one throughout the 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexico border, where bridges and gates link communities that often depend on international commerce for their survival. Just as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez depend on American tourism, so do some merchants of San Diego and El Paso depend on Mexican shoppers for a part of their livelihood.

That point was illustrated most dramatically during the 1982 peso devaluations, when some communities on the U.S. side were thrown into economic crises--with unemployment skyrocketing to Great Depression-levels--because many Mexican shoppers could no longer afford to cross the border and buy American goods. In fact, many U.S. border towns have yet to recover from the crisis.

The widespread commerce demonstrates that the international crossing points are more than just a convenience for tourists: They are the linchpin of the fragile economy of the border region, which is among the poorest in the United States. And when the crossings are closed or backed up, border experts say, the border region suffers.

“They (the crossings) are the very lifeblood of the border,� said Ellwyn R. Stoddard, a sociologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who has studied the border for more than 30 years. “We’re two parts of Siamese twins, and these are our umbilical cords. Cutting the umbilical cords can have very severe consequences for both sides.�

The problem, many border observers say, is that the federal governments based in far away Mexico City and Washington fail to recognize this interdependence--and they fail to see the near-disastrous consequences that can accompany protracted border slowdowns.

In fact, officials of the U.S. Customs Service, which operates the points of entry jointly with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, state frankly that their priority is not to move travelers back and forth quickly.

“Our mission of interdiction of narcotics is prime in our mind,� Quintin L. Villanueva, regional customs commissioner, said last week.

And, with federal agencies experiencing manpower shortages, something has got to give. At the border, what often gives is easing cross-border travel.

Critics of this policy say that anti-smuggling efforts are fine, but they argue that U.S. officials should accomplish that while accommodating a smooth flow of traffic through the border.

“We have no problem with drug interdiction,� said Alfredo Garcia, a San Ysidro businessman who was complaining about the recent backups. “But this is being done at the expense of businesses down here. We’re hurting bad.�

At San Ysidro, which U.S. officials say is the world’s busiest land crossing, such backups can be particularly severe. Each day, according to U.S. figures, 93,000 people and 27,000 vehicles enter the United States at San Ysidro.

Nonetheless, U.S. officials occasionally use border traffic slowdowns as a means of pressuring Mexico to take various actions--a kind of traffic-backup diplomacy.

Such was the case last year, when U.S. authorities began an enhanced-enforcement effort--resulting in delays of more than seven hours at San Ysidro--designed to pressure Mexico to step up its investigation of the murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena. And such was the case during so-called Operation Intercept during the late 1960s, which was aimed at forcing Mexico to increase drug-interdiction efforts.

In both cases, the effects on border businesses were profound.

Thus, when the U.S. Customs Service in San Diego began its recent enhanced-enforcement effort, leading to the two-hour delays in San Ysidro, many Mexicans and other border observers immediately assumed that the motivation was to force the Mexican government to get tough with drug traffickers.

“Of course it’s a pressure tactic,� said Alfredo Ramirez Lewall, of the Tijuana tourism bureau.

Customs officials denied there was any such motivations. They said they were merely stepping up drug-related enforcement in response to the rising amounts of drugs that are believed to be crossing into the United States from Mexico.

“We’re not trying to pressure anybody,� said Allan Rappoport, customs director in San Diego.

But skepticism about customs’ motivations is widespread. Many observers also believe that the crackdown was designed to put pressure on the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to increase its manpower at the border inspection stations. Although a long-standing agreement commits both agencies to manning the border posts equally, in recent years customs officials have been assuming most of the burden.

Indeed, once the disagreement broke into the open, INS posted additional men at the border and officials said they would attempt to live up to the agreement.

“We’ll do all we can to maintain that 50-50 commitment,� INS western commissioner Harold Ezell said during an unusual joint press conference in San Ysidro last week aimed at unveiling a new era of “cooperation.�

“If we have to have a show of unity, fine,� added Villanueva, the regional customs commissioner.

But beyond the show of unity, few promises were made. Officials of the two agencies vowed to work together more closely, but they acknowledged that they occasionally would have to pull men off the border to deal with “priority� issues, such as drug enforcement and the detection of illegal aliens.

“There will always be delays at the border,� Ezell said. “We’re not in the turnstile business like Disneyland, where you buy a ticket and the idea is to move them through as fast as possible. We’re looking for contraband, and people trying to cross illegally.�