Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

4/4/00 News Report -- The Fresno Bee

The U.S. Border Patrol's fading law enforcement presence in the six-county Central Valley could soon disappear altogether, eliminating a second line of defense against illegal immigration into the nation's richest agricultural region.

Officials at the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service have recommended to Congress that the agency's Livermore sector be closed and its law enforcement agents transferred to duty along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Valley would lose its last three patrol agents and its only special agent if the INS plan is approved, said John R. Crockford, a senior Border Patrol agent with 23 years' experience and vice president of National Border Patrol Council Local 2730.

The only Border Patrol workers left in the Fresno office would be the three detention officers who often drive the buses that transport apprehended illegal immigrants, the employee said.

The Livermore sector includes Fresno, Madera, Tulare, Kings, Merced and Mariposa counties, he said.

An INS spokeswoman declined to give many details of the proposal.

"Our regional director, Johnny Williams, made the recommendation to close the Livermore sector," Sharon Gavin said. "He made the recommendation in late 1999. No decision has been made about timing."

But it's not a done deal, yet. Crockford hopes public outrage will force the INS to change its mind.

"I don't know if we can stop the INS," Crockford said. "Public outcry could do it. It did before. We're hoping we can get the same support this time."

The INS, which oversees the Border Patrol, has threatened to close the Central Valley operation several times during the past nine years.

Perhaps the most serious threat came in 1996 when INS officials met with a group of Valley civic and law enforcement leaders about their plans to close 16 Border Patrol stations, including the one in Fresno.

The Fresno station survived after a broad-based coalition of community groups, including at least one immigration advocacy agency, rallied to the Border Patrol's support.

Crockford said the stakes are just as high this time. If the Border Patrol in the Valley is gutted, he said, then enforcement of U.S. immigration laws would fall entirely on the shoulders of INS agents.

Crockford compared the roles of Border Patrol and INS agents to a big city police department. INS agents are plainclothes detectives while Border Patrol agents are uniformed police officers out on the beat.

His point: Border Patrol agents perform the kind of hands-on, neighborhood-based enforcement duties that the INS just can't handle.

Elimination of the Border Patrol's law enforcement arm in the Valley probably won't directly affect everybody in Fresno, Crockford said.

"People who live in Clovis or northeast Fresno won't miss us," he said. "I really think it will hurt essentially two classes of people: The working poor impacted by crime and workers on the low end of the wage scale who now have to compete with a higher population of illegals."

Crockford said each Fresno-based Border Patrol employee received a letter describing the INS proposal late last month from the Livermore Sector's acting chief patrol agent, Robert J. Logazino.

According to this memo, the proposal has four main parts:

1. All agents and special agents will be offered transfers to the border.

2. All detention officers will continue to work at their current duty stations but will become part of either the San Francisco or Los Angeles districts.

3. Dispatchers and radio technicians will transfer to the San Francisco District.

4. Support personnel such as secretaries and clerks whose jobs are being eliminated will be informed of vacancies in other INS and federal agency offices.

The eight-person Fresno office has one secretary/language specialist in addition to three patrol agents, one special agent, who conducts more detailed investigations, and three detention officers, Crockford said.

The Livermore Sector has 18 agents today, down from 78 in 1988, Crockford said. He said the INS let the sector's staffing drop so it can make a stronger case to Congress for closing the stations.

"They can say, 'There's nothing else here. You might as well let us close it,'" Crockford said.

The union will file a complaint this month with the Federal Labor Relations Authority alleging the INS failed to keep Border Patrol employees fully informed about the plan as required by their collective bargaining agreement, Crockford said.