Texas Governor Objects to INS Agents’ Transfer

SAN DIEGO — In a new election-year immigration salvo, Texas Gov. George Bush Jr. criticized the Clinton Administration on Wednesday for redeploying 46 Border Patrol agents from Texas to a stretch of eastern San Diego county heavily transited by illegal immigrants.

Mark Moody, a Border Patrol spokesman in San Diego, said the 46 Texas agents would join a group of 100 reinforcements brought in to patrol the east county area along with the equivalent of 100 California agents on overtime shifts. All will be relieved Dec. 15 by 224 permanent agents.

“I will give . . . the president the benefit of the doubt,” Bush told reporters in Austin. “But it seems awfully suspicious that as we come down the election cycle that there is more emphasis placed on California than Texas.”

Recent polls show Clinton leading the presidential race in California but running close with Republican contender Bob Dole in Texas. The illegal immigration issue fuels partisan debate in both states.

“We’ve got ranchers and farmers and local communities that are literally under siege,” Bush said. “And lo and behold . . . the federal government has made the decision to transfer agents out of our state.”

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s western regional office in Laguna Niguel, said the 46 Texas agents are only 2% of that state’s 2,276 Border Patrol force.

“It’s not politics, it’s a strategic decision,” Kice said. “East County is a top priority and we always knew it would be the next step.”