http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/10 ... 0_2_06.txt

'Battle at the border': Authorities say fence may not lower crime rate

By: STEPHANIE INNES - Arizona Daily Star

When he was 16, Gonzalo Llamas left his home in Zacatecas, Mexico, and illegally crossed the border by paying $20 to use an American citizen's passport.

Though the passport holder was old and balding, Llamas made it across and began his new life cleaning restaurants for $9 a job.

Now 50, Llamas is a U.S. citizen and owns a construction company in San Diego.


And he wants the border sealed.

The reason?

Violent crime.

''You have your good people and your bad people,'' he said. ''I'm really open-minded for people to make a better life for themselves without causing problems to anyone. But with a few bad ones, we all lose. You have to have some control.''

Llamas shares the common perception that more security along the border means more safety.

But along with tougher enforcement has come a spike in violence against those who police the international boundary.

Assaults on U.S. Border Patrol agents, including rock-throwings, doubled from 2004 to 2005 as the number of agents increased by 4 percent, and now are occurring at a rate of more than two per day, federal data show.

As security tightens, smugglers dig tunnels under fences, disguise themselves as members of the Mexican military, and, in general, become bolder, authorities say. Around Yuma, they've thrown rocks and Molotov cocktails and fired paintball guns and real firearms at agents.

In response, agents are firing nonlethal pepperballs. They also use firearms, though U.S. Customs and Border Protection won't disclose how many illegal entrants have been killed by federal officers.

''It's a battle at the border,'' said Tyler Emblem, an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol's Search, Trauma and Rescue Unit in the Yuma Sector. ''It's not like five years ago. When we showed up, they would run. It's making it harder for these smuggling organizations to make a living, and we are the enemy.''

Last month, a Border Patrol agent in Yuma shot and killed a Mexican man that U.S. officials say threw softball-sized rocks at agents. The FBI is investigating.

Data from the Tucson-based human rights group CoaliciÛn de Derechos Humanos says 11 illegal entrants since 2003 have died of gunshot wounds while crossing the Mexican border into Arizona, but the records do not indicate who fired the shots.

Aside from brazen smugglers, it's difficult to predict what will happen to crime and violence in the United States if the border is sealed. Some worry more fences will create social unrest.

Others say fences and other security measures have dramatically decreased overall crime rates in such areas as San Diego and El Paso, though such border-tightening strategies also can move crime to more remote areas with less security.

Columbus, N.M.

Columbus, N.M., farmer James Johnson, of WH Johnson & Sons, owns 3,000 acres against the international border.

He said he has been threatened and has had guns pulled on him three times, most recently in 2002.

In 1991, Johnson's father and uncle were held at gunpoint by two illegal entrants who stole their car. Johnson used to carry his own gun but stopped after he says federal officials warned him he was being watched by Mexican smugglers.

It's common for people to drive through the flimsy barbed-wire fence that marks the border and flatten his crops. One car recently ended up in a drainage canal. Often, the drive-throughs include high-speed pursuits.

The wide-open border is disheartening, Johnson said. He'd like to see a security fence. It wouldn't solve the problem, he said, but it would help.

New Mexico has 1.2 miles of border fence, near the city of Sunland Park. The rest of the state is divided from Mexico by fences made from three strands of barbed wire, which often are cut or run over by drivers.

Paul Armijo, police chief in Columbus, has three officers to monitor an area directly across from Las Chepas, Chihuahua, a community with a reputation for violent criminal cartels.

''We had a lot of drug trafficking, a lot of immigrant smuggling. Here in Columbus, we have several homes that are abandoned because people have moved,'' he said. ''Those homes end up being used for alien smuggling, for drug smuggling, for stash houses.''

What's needed, Armijo said, is a better-working plan to allow Mexicans to cross the border and work legally. He also wants the United States to teach Mexico how to do more to help its own people. He said a big fence or a wall would create more problems in his community and for U.S. law enforcement.

''The more barrier you put up, the more force they are going to use to get across and you are just asking for trouble,'' he said. ''When people are desperate to go make a better life, a better living, they are going to do whatever it takes.''

San Diego

In San Diego, crime rates dropped significantly after border security in the area tightened with Operation Gatekeeper in 1994.

Per-capita aggravated assaults, burglaries, robberies and murders now are less than half of what they were in 1993, San Diego Police Department records show. The Border Patrol's San Diego Sector said Operation Gatekeeper reduced crime by 82 percent.

Yet others question if border security was responsible for the drop. San Diego Police Department spokeswoman Monica Munoz, for example, said it would be inaccurate to assume less crime in her city had anything to do with border security.

''It's because we've been so strenuously involved in community policing,'' she said. ''Nobody here would tell you our drop in crime is due to the border fence. A good number of people we arrest are not Mexican nationals.''

Also, the plummeting crime rates in such border cities as San Diego, El Paso and Laredo in the last 10 years mirror a national trend ---- crime rates dropped across the country in the same time period, notes Pedro H. Albuquerque, an assistant professor of economics at Texas A&M International in Laredo. He studies border violence and has compared murder rates on both sides of the line.

His research shows falling crime rates in border cities more likely are due to a mix of better border security, improved policing and bigger budgets for local police.

Not only are crime rates dropping in border cities, they actually are lower than in most U.S. cities. The murder rate in Laredo in 2001 was 4.4 per 100,000 people, for example, while the average for U.S. cities in 2001 was 5.6 per 100,000. Nuevo Laredo's was 15.4, said Albuquerque, who based his information on FBI crime reports and coroners' statistics in Mexico.

''Basically, law enforcement on the Mexican side is not efficient. They don't enforce the law. But the American side has been quite successful in keeping groups out,'' Albuquerque said. ''There is some exaggeration that living in these cities is like the front line of a war, and that is not really happening.''

With the border tougher to cross, criminals tend to stay in Mexico. When violence spills over, it usually stays in certain spots and among certain people, said Jorge Santibanez, president of a university-based think tank at Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana.

''It's not a social violence,'' he said in Spanish. ''It continues to be a sectorized violence.''

Some ranchers and farmers in open border areas like New Mexico say they worry about their safety, but dozens of residents interviewed along the international line say they don't live in fear.

Those facing the most danger are in law enforcement and illegal trafficking, residents say.

Their advice: Don't look for trouble and you won't find it.

''If you did mess with them, I don't know what would happen, maybe you would get shot,'' said Ramon De La Ossa, 61.

Arizona Star reporter Brady McCombs contributed to this story.

-- Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at 573-4134 or at sinnes@azstarnet.com.