REMOTE POST MARKS GATE TO U.S. : SAN DIEGO COUNTY STATION RECORDS RISE IN ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSINGS.

Byline: Dana Calvo Associated Press 

Isabella Angeles sits in the shade outside a general store, crunching on fried chips. In a few hours, she will attempt to defy the U.S. government's well-financed illegal immigration strategy.

Angeles, 25, has flown from the southern state of Guerrero to the U.S.-Mexico border. She has never been this far north, but Mexico's underground railroad has prepared her well.

``At Tijuana, they told us to go east,'' she says through a mouth full of chips. `` `Head to the mountains,' they said.''

She knows to cross at least 40 miles east of the Pacific Ocean, and she knows to bring extra money for Tecate's municipal police officers. The bribe will enable her to break local rules with impunity and rest for a few hours in an abandoned shack before making her move.

Like many Mexicans who want to enter the United States illegally these days, Angeles has headed east. Word on the street cautions that the border in San Diego has been shut down and crossers should attempt their journey in southeastern California, Arizona or New Mexico.

That plays into the hands of the U.S. Border Patrol. It wants to force migrants into isolated mountains and deserts where the terrain is rougher, the weather more brutal and the crossing time longer.

U.S. Border Patrol agents working these scrubby hills infested with rattlesnakes are based out of a station in Campo, Calif., where they are fighting unprecedented numbers of Mexican migrants.

Campo's agents are paying for the success of their colleagues 40 miles to the west in Imperial Beach, the five-mile stretch of border that hugs the Pacific Ocean. It was the first area in the Southwest to receive the spoils of the federal government's new anti-illegal immigration efforts 18 months ago.

Night scopes and a modern processing center were to arrive at Campo this month. Until they do, thousands of illegal immigrants and drug shipments will flow from Tecate into eastern San Diego County.

The momentum of illegal traffic coming over the mountains can be stunning. During the first week of April, Campo agents arrested 1,903 illegal immigrants. At Imperial Beach, three times the number of agents arrested 1,177 illegal immigrants in the same period.

In the high desert of east San Diego County, as in much of the Southwest, agents work in relative isolation, miles from headquarters and backup assistance.

In one year, 64 percent fewer illegal immigrants were arrested at the well-staffed Imperial Beach section, while 292 percent more were detained at Campo. Of the 8,534 migrants detained at Campo in March, all but five were Mexican nationals.

``We heard San Diego was pretty vigilant,'' said a Mexican arrested on a recent night in Campo. He had traveled from Mexico City, where everyone knows the federal government's crackdown called Operation Gatekeeper virtually has shut down Imperial Beach, he said.

In Arizona, the strategy is called Operation Safeguard and in Texas and parts of New Mexico, it is Operation Hold the Line.

The 116 Border Patrol agents in Campo work a 25-mile stretch of border without night scopes, all-terrain vehicles or computerized identification systems.

On a recent night, agent Dean Eppen leaned close to the ground. Performing a technique called ``cutting for sign,'' he gently traced the lines of a migrant's footprint.

``You catch what you can,'' Eppen said.

He went a bit further and saw the migrants had brushed out their prints. ``Sometimes the brushouts stand out more than the prints,'' he said.

Eppen, a former distance runner, spent 20 minutes hoofing it up a steep incline, chasing what he thought was the footprint he had found earlier.

Immigrants arrested at Campo are brought to a trailer with two small holding cells. Agents sit at three desks pushed together and take down the information by hand.

On a recent night, when 70 migrants were brought in at one time, an agent stood outside and shone a flashlight over the crouching men while other agents sat inside, writing as fast as they could.

With no time or equipment to enter their fingerprints into an electronic database, there is no way to check aliases against confirmed identities.

Angeles has heard that Campo's processing center is ``no big deal.''

``I'm going to tell them I'm a movie star,'' she said. ``They'll never know.''