BORDER PATROL MOVES INTO COMPUTER AGE : `IDENT' SYSTEM OFFERS ELECTRONIC FINGERPRINTING, NATIONAL DATABASE.

Byline: David LaGesse The Dallas Morning News

Amid the clamor of new agents and steel fences along the Mexican border, technicians are quietly stitching together an electronic curtain to fortify the fight against illegal immigration.

A new computer system - called Ident - is the most advanced network deployed nationwide to field officers, promising to thrust the Border Patrol decades forward in technology.

Just three years ago, top federal officials said they were startled to see Border Patrol agents using manual typewriters, pens and pencils. Now agents take electronic fingerprints, snap computerized photos and match them against huge databases within seconds.

It's a massive effort to document the undocumented at the border.

Federal officials first installed the computers in late 1994 at California's border with Mexico. Now they're appearing in all Border Patrol sectors along the Southwest frontier, including in Texas.

In the last year in San Diego, the system has helped quadruple the prosecutions of criminal aliens - immigrants convicted of U.S. crimes, who then are deported and who later try to return, said Alan Bersin, U.S. attorney in San Diego and the Justice Department's overseer of border programs.

``Just in catching criminal aliens, Ident has proven its worth in San Diego,'' he said. ``The Border Patrol is credited with helping to significantly cut the area's crime rate.''

Ident, however, also offers a wealth of data never before available to Justice officials about undocumented border crossings, Bersin said.

The technology can help detect immigrant smugglers, target document counterfeiters, and track migrant flows as they shift in response to tougher enforcement.

``It's a system that has revolutionized the possibilities for border enforcement,'' he said.

Immigrant advocates worry about how the government will use the new data. Prosecutors, for example, could choose to routinely punish immigrants who repeatedly try to cross the border - instead of just sending them home, as is the common practice.

That could mean jailing undocumented workers who've been traditionally viewed as harmless scofflaws seeking a better life.

There's been no decision whether to begin punishing work-seeking immigrants repeatedly caught at the border, said Robert Bach, executive associate commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The system's prime focus is weeding out those already convicted of crimes. But top INS officials have considered whether to halt the ``turnstile'' abuse by detainees who are sent home only to return again and again to the border.

Civil libertarians also worry about data abuse and inaccuracy, particularly in the hands of a federal agency with a bad reputation for previous computer work.

The INS, which oversees the Border Patrol, has come under severe congressional criticism for problems with earlier, less-ambitious computer projects.

``The Border Patrol is the last agency that should be field-testing a sophisticated new computer technology,'' said Lucas Guttentag of the American Civil Liberties Union. ``As a rule, the INS has proven itself incapable of keeping any complete and accurate databases.''

Agents say the criticism is unfair, arguing that the Border Patrol was long neglected among federal law enforcement agencies.

``We were never given the proper resources to do the job right,'' said Ken Stitt, an assistant chief in the San Diego sector.

A 19-year veteran of the force, Stitt worked many years in understaffed stations with broken-down vehicles and rickety typewriters. In three years, a wave of national anxiety about illegal immigration has helped double Border Patrol manpower, bought sophisticated night-vision gear and launched widespread computerization.

The Border Patrol is a fast-growth industry amid a wave of federal cutbacks.

``Let's just say it's nice to finally be getting the right tools,'' Stitt said.

Computers won't seal the porous border, whose 2,000 miles include desolate expanses. But they allow the agency to do things it never could before, officers say.

``The new system relies on something that is unique to every person - their fingerprint,'' said Ping Li, an INS official overseeing the new information systems.

``We're moving away from a name-based system to one that relies on biometric data,'' Li said.

Every detained immigrant now gets an FIN - a fingerprint identification number. They get it while being processed after being caught crossing the border, whether run down by an agent for jumping a fence or stopped by an inspector.

There's a variety of holding cells in the Border Patrol station near the downtown El Paso bridge to Mexico, each with a clear plastic wall facing the room's center. The cells hold women, men or juveniles before processing and then after processing.

Processing has historically meant filling out a form and perhaps taking a photo, particularly of identifying marks on immigrants being deported after being convicted of a crime. Agents could only hope to recognize anybody who might pass through the station again, and check them against the ``Bad Boy'' files kept in well-worn green notebooks.

``You can often spot the prison tattoos,'' Evans said. ``Some tattoos also just scream - `I'm a gang member!' ''

With suspicions aroused, an agent might have to spend hours interviewing detainees. ``It was time he couldn't spend out on the line,'' said Carlos Almengor, a supervisory agent visiting from his post at Truth or Consequences, N.M. ``A big goal of this is to allow more time where we can be effective.''

Processing now involves standing an apprehended immigrant before a computer, snapping a photo and taking a fingerprint on an electronic sensor.

While the agent types in name, age and other information provided by the detainee, Ident automatically checks the fingerprint against those stored in the national database.

Within 15 seconds, the system checks one database for criminal immigrants - which now includes about 50,000 individuals. Over the next 10 or 15 minutes, it also checks the fingerprint against a database of about 500,000 immigrants already nabbed more than once somewhere along the border.

Programmers can tell the system to identify immigrants who have been caught repeatedly. Prosecutors, for example, might ask to look closely at any immigrant caught more than 12 times.

Targeting undocumented crossers already has helped identify smugglers and guides, or ``coyotes,'' who have made border crossings a business, said Border Patrol agent Steve Evans.

Computers won't make the decision to prosecute - prosecutors will retain the discretion of who is a coyote and who is just a determined undocumented worker, said Bill Blagg, U.S. attorney in San Antonio, whose district includes much of the Texas border.

There's no effort yet to go after workers trying to make a living, prosecutors say.

``We're not changing our policies,'' he said. ``We'll just be working with more complete and accurate information.''

But officials may soon decide to target the most desperate immigrants, those persistently trying to cross the border and better a dirt-poor existence, said Charlotte McCann, a counselor with the United Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Austin.

``There's a fear that we will criminalize a group that really is innocuous,'' she said. ``They're people who need work and are willing to persevere.''

That argument draws less public sympathy than it once did because of growing concerns about illegal immigration, she said. An accelerated shift in public opinion, and the country could be filling its jails with undocumented workers, McCann said.

That's a public question for the policy-makers, said Stitt of the Border Patrol. ``We're aware of humanitarian issues, but it's always been a crime to illegally cross the border,'' he said. ``And Congress wants us to do a better job of enforcing that.''