Border Patrol Critic Will Be Honored by Human Rights Group : Award: Advocate fighting abuse of immigrants crossing from Mexico is the first U.S. citizen to be recognized by the worldwide watchdog organization. He sees the honor as an indictment of U.S. actions.

SAN DIEGO —  In the last 10 years, when he emerged as a prominent advocate for immigrants on the U.S-Mexico border, Roberto Martinez has been widely quoted, praised and reviled.

Next week, he will be honored for his achievements by becoming the first U.S. citizen to be named an “international human rights monitor” by Human Rights Watch, a worldwide watchdog organization. Martinez will receive the annual award along with activists from 13 strife-torn nations, including a Haitian Catholic priest, a Yugoslav political prisoner and a community organizer named posthumously after she was slain this year by leftist terrorists in Peru.

Martinez directs the border program of the American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit group that investigates abuse of immigrants, particularly mistreatment of illegal border crossers by U.S. immigration agents.

A word-of-mouth network on both sides of the border has spread Martinez’s name over the years; dozens of Latinos, from longtime residents to recently arrived day laborers, show up at his downtown San Diego office each week asking for help.

“He is the dean of human rights advocates of the border,” said Ellen Lutz of the Americas Watch, a division of Human Rights Watch, who wrote a report this year critical of the U.S. Border Patrol. “We pick people who work in the trenches, who have long and outstanding histories of working on behalf of victims of human rights violation.”

Martinez, 55, views his being honored with the award as “an indictment of the U.S. government, which condemns abuses in other countries and ignores them in our own.”

“They say one of the ways you can judge a person’s success is by the number of enemies they have,” said Martinez, who has been the target of occasional death threats. “If that’s true, I’m very successful.”

The award invites controversy by grouping the U.S. government with countries whose troops and police forces engage in widespread killings, torture and other violent practices that are extremely rare in this country.

In fact, Border Patrol officials and groups advocating immigration control dismiss Martinez as a knee-jerk critic who makes unsubstantiated allegations.

“His objectivity is clouded by his extreme hatred for the Border Patrol,” said Ben Seeley of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “He has never had a solution; he has never offered anything but condemnation.”

Seeley, who has debated Martinez on immigration in public forums, said Martinez also has an unrealistically one-sided view of illegal immigrants.

“He has a difficult time distinguishing between the truly honest migrant worker and the opportunistic criminal element that exploits our porous borders,” Seeley said.

In an interview this week, Martinez described his work as a “social justice ministry.” He acknowledged that his intense faith in his clients occasionally leads him to pursue cases that prove to be fabrications or exaggerations.

“I have been burned in the past,” he said. “It has been a problem from time to time. But by and large, the people who come to me are honest and sincere.”

Lutz said she nominated Martinez because he has heightened public awareness of the plight of immigrants and because her organization has intensified its scrutiny of alleged abuses in the United States after years of concentrating on Latin America.

Americas Watch has studied police brutality and U.S. prison conditions in addition to the Border Patrol, Lutz said.

She said the first recognition of a U.S. advocate does not imply that violations here are as bad as those in the countries of Martinez’s fellow monitors, some of whom were selected in hopes that publicity would shield them from persecution.

“Human rights abuses in the U.S. are of sufficiently serious magnitude that we should be concerned,” she said. “It doesn’t make any difference whether they are more serious or less serious.”

Martinez grew up in the barrios of San Diego, where he says recurring humiliation and harassment by police and Border Patrol agents instilled in him a determination to fight back. He worked as a technical illustrator and engineer before becoming a full-time advocate in the early 1980s. He said he earns $26,000 a year.

Martinez and his wife have been married nine years; they have four children and he has another five children by his first marriage. He said his family supports his obsessive dedication to his cause, despite the strains and sacrifice.

“It takes you away from the home,” said Martinez, whose gentle manner contrasts with his firebrand reputation. “You become so visible you are called in to handle all kinds of situations. It consumes a lot of time. It is always there.”

Martinez said the international recognition by Human Rights Watch--he will be feted at celebrity-studded events in Los Angeles and New York--inspires him to keep going.

Despite his unflagging capacity to denounce perceived injustice, Martinez said he harbors no ill feelings toward individuals.

“What I hate are the crimes, not the people who commit them,” he said.