Median Message : CHP Targets Migrants on the Freeways

It’s midmorning and half a dozen migrants are perched on the center median of Interstate 5. Waiting.

After 10 minutes, a car horn bleats and the group jogs across southbound lanes to a man who will take them north.

This scene plays out daily on border-region freeways, but it is one the California Highway Patrol is hoping to eradicate with special sweeps that began Wednesday.

For at least one month, a four-car unit will work around the clock to stem the foot traffic on border-area freeway medians, focusing on the most heavily traveled strip, the southernmost stretch of Interstate 5.

Hours after the group of migrants darted to their guide Wednesday, two CHP patrol cars snaked across the highway, slowing motorists to a crawl in both directions to clear the roadway while other officers bolted from their cars to chase pedestrians.

Some got away, slipping under the twisted chain-link fence that borders the freeway. Others, like 36-year-old Ramon from Jalisco, were caught, frisked and released on San Ysidro streets, while some were taken straight to a waiting U.S. Border Patrol car.

All received this warning from Spanish-speaking CHP Officer Pete Herrera: “The freeway is for motorists. If you walk on the freeway, we will take you off and hand you over to the Border Patrol.”

After a month, CHP Officer Steve Deck figures, migrants will get the message.

U.S. Border Patrol agents will not chase undocumented migrants once they reach the freeway for fear the migrants will run into traffic. In the past three years, 52 pedestrians have been struck and killed by motorists near the border and 65 have been injured, the CHP says.

The Mexican consul general in San Diego and immigration activists have expressed concern that the freeway sweeps will lead to increased cooperation between the CHP and the U.S. Border Patrol. But CHP officials have stressed that clearing pedestrians off the freeway is a safety measure, not an immigration tactic.

“Our intent is to remove pedestrians, regardless of nationality, off the freeway,” said CHP Lt. Tom Thomas Wednesday. “As far as any coordination, liaison or communication between the two agencies, the Border Patrol has their function, which I fully support, and we have ours, which is to promote traffic safety.”

But Herrera said his admonition to pedestrians is genuine: “We will turn them over (to the Border Patrol) because we just can’t be doing this all day. We’ll give them a warning the first time, but, if they insist on getting on the freeway, we will turn them over.”

If a Border Patrol car happens to be nearby, there may not be a first warning.

“The agreement is, if we see (Border Patrol units) there, we will turn (the migrants) over to them. If they aren’t available, we will just turn them loose,” said Lt. Joe Garrison, head of CHP field operations.

The immigration agency has a strong presence in the area, Deck said. “There are so many Border Patrol units down here, we can’t help but run into them,” he said. “I mean, this is the border. This is where they’re supposed to be. We can’t avoid them.”

The CHP has been turning over juveniles to the Border Patrol during practice sweeps over the past few weeks, Garrison added. The CHP also calls the Border Patrol if the agency’s vans or interpreting services are needed, Deck said.

And Deck recently turned a family over to the immigration agency. The mother was limping, Deck said, and he feared they would return to the freeway and get hurt.

The same happened to Sergio, 19, his 18-year-old wife, Rosa, and his 15-year-old cousin, Patty, on Wednesday. After an admonition from Herrera, the three were driven off the freeway. When Officer Deck noticed a waiting Border Patrol car, he decided to send the three Tijuana residents directly to it.

Sergio, who said the trio crossed the border to grab a hamburger and go back home, said the freeway sweep seemed like an immigration tactic to him.

“Look for yourself,” he said from the back seat of the Border Patrol car. “Here’s the (CHP) and the Border Patrol together.”

Border Patrol spokesman Steve Kean said that, although several people had been turned over to his agency by CHP officials in recent weeks, Border Patrol apprehensions have not increased.

Nevertheless, the CHP tactics are welcome. “Our agents will not look the other way if they determine a person to be undocumented. We will respond to any agency that gives us a call,” Kean said.

The CHP special enforcement unit is the latest addition to what the agency calls the “three E’s of traffic safety”: education, engineering and enforcement. Flashing lights and signs warn motorists of pedestrian crossings, and the California Department of Transportation plans to build a $922,000, 8-foot fence that will extend along the median for 4 miles to discourage crossings.

Oscar, a 25-year-old Mexico City native who spends seven months of the year working the fields of Idaho, Washington and Oregon, and has often traveled the I-5 median, gave the operation slim chances of succeeding.

“What I’m telling you is people are crossing every 5 minutes, every 2 minutes, every day, all day,” he said Wednesday, straddling the jagged edge of the rusted border fence where Virginia Avenue meets Mexico. “So how many times are they going to do this? Traffic won’t be able to move.”

The steady flow of migrants northward is too strong to stem, added 23-year-old Hannibal, also of Mexico City. “No matter what they do to the freeway, people are going to cross,” he said. They may move eastward to other crossing points, he conceded--something Kean said his agency would like to see--but the freeway median is “the No. 1 way,” Hannibal said.

And the new CHP tactic may not improve safety, the men said. “The people will get startled and run, especially the women,” Oscar said. “It might be more dangerous.”

Officer Steve Deck said the hardest part has been coordinating the traffic breaks in both directions: while northbound lanes were cleared at one point Wednesday, southbound traffic continued to flow. But no one has been injured fleeing CHP officers during the recent practice sweeps, Deck said. And officers have tried to clear a large enough portion of the freeway to avert accidents.

“They give them enough of a safety envelope so, if they elect to run, they can do so safely,” Lt. Garrison said of the units. Although Deck said there are already fewer migrants on the median than before the practice runs, CHP officials conceded that the long-term benefits may be elusive. “When we start applying the pressure one place, they’ll just go somewhere else,” said Lt. Garrison.

“It’s a game to see who can do more,” said Jose, 28, who planned to cross Wednesday to join his brother in San Diego. “They come up with ideas to keep us off. We come up with ideas to cross.”