Citizens on the Lookout for Illegal Migrants

SAN DIEGO — Larry Lionheart, San Diego auto mechanic and Airport Posse member, is reporting to posse leader Muriel Watson.

“It was a good flight,” Lionheart says.

“That’s what we want,” Watson responds.

Translation: Another plane has taken off from Lindbergh Field without anybody aboard whom the posse suspects, by their looks or demeanor, is an illegal immigrant.

As the national debate on immigration continues apace, San Diego’s international airport has become the latest focus of attention by border control activists. Encouraged by a conservative talk show host, the group calling itself the Airport Posse has formed to eyeball passengers boarding late night and early morning flights.

The posse’s goal is to discourage illegal immigrants who might be looking for an airborne way to evade the Border Patrol checkpoints along Interstates 5 and 15 as they attempt to venture to cities beyond San Diego.

Wearing navy blue and gold T-shirts with the words “U.S. Citizen Patrol” on the back and a logo on the front that looks amazingly like the Border Patrol insignia, posse members for the last month have been watching and taking notes. Occasionally they politely prod airline personnel to adhere to a Federal Aviation Administration rule requiring all passengers to show a government-issued photo identification.

“We’re all concerned that San Diego is becoming known as an exporter of illegal aliens to the rest of the country,” said law student Steve Dari.

Watson, widow of a Border Patrol agent and a longtime leader of border protests, counsels the group never to confront a suspected illegal immigrant. “Remember,” she tells her troops, “we just stand there and observe and say nothing at all.”

Still, immigrants rights groups who say Watson and the others are acting like vigilantes have asked the Department of Justice to intervene.

“What’s next?” asked Herman Baca, chairman of the National City-based Committee on Chicano Rights. “Are these self-appointed vigilantes going to start stopping children going to school, families going to church, people of Mexican ancestry shopping at Price Club?”

The Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service say the group is neither a help nor a hindrance to their efforts.

“They’re exercising their constitutional right to be at the airport, just like the guy playing his tambourine,” said INS spokesman Rudy Murillo. “Our only concern is that the public not think that the airport is being used for mass launches [of illegal immigrants] to all points of the country, because that’s not true.”

Although it will not talk numbers and hours, the INS has undercover agents at Lindbergh Field making arrests, Murillo said.

Posse members believe that immigrant smugglers are hustling their charges onto flights at the last moment when airline personnel are too busy to ask for identification and during hours when the INS agents may not be on duty. The group watches flights not just to Los Angeles but also to Sacramento, San Francisco, Chicago and Pittsburgh, among other locations.

In January, the FAA tightened safety rules to require all passengers to show photo identification. The rules were not designed for immigration purposes, but Watson and others believe they provide a good way to stop illegal immigrants from taking airplanes because many, particularly those who have just come across the border, will not have proper identification.

Murillo says that the airport has never been a major gathering spot for illegal immigrants and that even intense enforcement will only net 20 or so immigrants over about a week, a pittance compared to the numbers crossing in eastern San Diego County since Operation Gatekeeper tightened the border near the San Ysidro crossing.

Claudia Smith, attorney for the California Rural Legal Assistance office in Oceanside, is concerned that the posse’s presence at the airport will intimidate “persons of Mexican appearance.” In a letter to the United States attorney, she suggested that the group is violating federal law that prohibits interference with interstate commerce.

Watson has heard it all before: criticism from immigrants rights activists, and assurances from government officials that they are doing everything they can. She was a leader in the “Light Up the Border” movement in the late 1980s in which protesters went to the border and turned on their cars’ headlights to dramatize what they felt was a border out of control.

“We got lights, a fence and a road at the border” after the protests, Watson said.

Then as now, talk show host Roger Hedgecock, a former San Diego mayor, is at the center of the anti-illegal immigration movement. His page on the World Wide Web refers to “Roger’s Airport Posse” and provides the phone number where posse organizers can be reached.

On July 4, Watson, Hedgecock and others plan a mass “Hands Across the Border” protest, possibly with hundreds of people showing their displeasure over illegal immigration. If the past is a guide, there will also be counter-protesters and a flock of reporters and cameras.

“[Atty. Gen.] Janet Reno said you can’t close down the border,” said posse member Christy King. “We’re going down there, hold hands and show that you can close the border if you want.”

There will also be protests when San Diego hosts the Republican National Convention from Aug. 12 to 15. For several days Hedgecock talked on his radio program of promoting a mass “mooning of Mexico,” in response to illegal immigrants who bare their buttocks when they spot protesters in the distance.

Hedgecock has since dropped the mooning idea, so the details of the convention protest are still unclear, except that it will be vocal and sizable.

“We’re going to be very active during the convention,” said Watson. “Very active.”