Coverage of Can We Control the Border?:

WASHINGTON -- The success of border-sealing operations in El Paso and some gains from a similar effort in San Diego indicate "our border can be controlled,'' a special interest group said Wednesday.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a research group financed by foundation grants and donations, said it studied apprehensions of illegal immigrants at various border crossing areas. It factored into the equation the presumed effects of economic trends in Mexico.

Operation Hold the Line in El Paso, begun in 1993, and Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego last year apparently led to a significant drop in apprehensions of illegal immigrants, the center said. The analysis said fewer apprehensions reflected better deterrence.

Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman James Michie said the agency agreed with the report's conclusion that "the border can be controlled'' and "is always pleased to receive constructive analysis and recommendations.''

The San Diego and El Paso sectors are the two busiest crossing areas for illegal immigration from Mexico.

The monthly average apprehensions had increased steadily until those two operations, and in the last fiscal year, dropped by 19 percent, from more than 100,000 to about 81,500 for the entire Mexican border. Because statisticians expected a continued substantial increase, "the overall significance of the change caused by better border control was a reduction of . .. nearly 40 percent below the prevailing trend,'' the report said.

In Operation Hold the Line, the Border Patrol chief for the sector, Silvestre Reyes, shifted personnel from operations away from the border to the boundary and paid for some initial overtime to boost the operation.

"By mobilizing his sector's resources along the border around the clock, he converted what had been a widely breached border river and fence between the busy cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, into an effective deterrent,'' the studies group said.

The San Diego effort has not had such a dramatic effect and the results "are still unclear,'' the Center for Immigration Studies said.

For one thing, the operation is much more recent than El Paso's, it said. The San Diego terrain is rougher, making apprehensions more difficult and tracking by car a problem.

Fence-building and monitoring the fence line are both more difficult, the center said.

Reyes had said he also expected authorities to notice a difference in the nature of illegal border-crossers in San Diego compared with El Paso. In El Paso, most are "local crossers,'' living in Ciudad Juarez. At the San Diego crossing points, most are from inland Mexico "and have undertaken a major effort, and cost in some instances, to get into the United States. '' That made them more desperate and less responsive to intensified enforcement, Reyes had told planners of the operation.

"More than a year of experience with Operation Hold the Line in El Paso establishes that the new approach there can be effective over the long term,'' the center report said.

"In San Diego, the results are much less clear.''

The "most porous'' section of the San Diego sector, Imperial Beach, had a significant drop in apprehensions, but other areas of the sector showed less of a decline than the trend before Operation Gatekeeper.

"We can control the border, in fact,'' center director Mark Krikorian said. "But there is more to be done. ''

The El Paso effort needs reinforcement, he said, and the San Diego operation "needs a more coordinated approach'' than achieved by Operation Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper needs the more visible presence of agents that was used in El Paso.

One simple factor may be the type of fence, the study said: The El Paso fence is chain-link, "that is, one through which the Border Patrol agents may be seen,'' whereas steel sheeting was used in the San Diego area.

Greater deterrence seems to promise a long-term decrease in the illegal immigrants who cross from Mexico, the study said, but "still needed are increased physical barriers, increased personnel and a more coordinated approach to overall border management.''

Well-publicized efforts to curtail illegal immigration in San Diego and El Paso have demonstrated that it can be achieved along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, according to a report released yesterday by the Center for Immigration Studies.

The report concluded that the results in El Paso have been dramatic and sustained since the crackdown there began in September 1993. The 8-month-old crackdown in San Diego, known as Operation Gatekeeper, has shown potential for substantially reducing illegal immigration. But when or if that potential will be fully realized remains unclear, said John L. Martin, author of the report.

The hopeful assessment of the potential in San Diego is based on a 40 percent decline in apprehensions along a 4 1/2 -mile stretch of the border in Imperial Beach, where Gatekeeper's efforts have been concentrated, said Martin, an analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

A decrease in apprehensions is seen by experts as an indication that illegal crossers have become discouraged by the effectiveness of the crackdown from even trying.

"That suggests that there is some real deterrent effect that is going on as a result of Operation Gatekeeper as it is set up in Imperial Beach," Martin said at a news conference held to release the report.

Imperial Beach is the most westerly portion of the 14-mile stretch of border in the San Diego area.

He said that if the Border Patrol continues "to develop the same type of strategy that's in effect in Imperial Beach and pushes it eastward, there probably can be control of the border throughout the entire San Diego (area)."

However, he added, there is little tangible evidence so far that the beneficial impact has spread to the other border areas in San Diego County.

"Until that overall deterrent capability is established in the (entire) San Diego sector, to some extent you're simply moving people from one area to another," said Martin.

Martin's conclusions about Gatekeeper are based on a 17 percent decline in apprehensions over the previous year in the entire San Diego area from October 1994 through February this year -- the first five months of the operation.

But that decline in apprehensions by the Border Patrol has given way to a 29 percent increase in the past three months, suggesting a sharp rise rather than a decline in attempted crossings throughout the San Diego area.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Ann Summers in San Diego said that while Imperial Beach has been the initial focus of the beefed up enforcement effort, additional agents now are being assigned to Chula Vista and Brown Field, where illegal crossing attempts have increased dramatically since Gatekeeper began.

She said the Border Patrol has envisioned all along that it would take as much as three years to gain control over the border. But that flies in the face of pronouncements by Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner, who has predicted much quicker results.

By comparison, apprehensions decreased 73 percent in El Paso during the first full year of the crackdown there.