Immigration's Happy Warrior

By Ed Magnuson

It was a busy, triumphant night for Harold Ezell. Outfitted in a blue blazer and striped tie, the Government's most ardent alien chaser jumped into a helicopter and rode along as it sent a piercing searchlight across the hills and arroyos south of San Diego. Then he scrambled into a pickup truck and peered through a nightscope to watch his agents tear through the chaparral in Dodge Ram Charger "war wagons" to overtake groups of Mexicans trying to sneak into the U.S. Later, he proudly counted the day's total arrests: 2,643 illegal immigrants. Nudging a companion, Ezell declared, "Isn't this fun!"

This happy warrior is the western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The graying, portly Ezell, 48, has taken an obscure job and made himself the point man in the Administration's war against illegal entry. He earns $68,000 a year to supervise 3,900 INS employees in California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam, but if he were paid extra for every raid he has led and every word he has uttered in public--or by the amount of wrath he has aroused--Ezell would be rich. Not just a law enforcer, he is a crusader.

"How are we going to keep our respect in the world if we continue to let our borders be overrun?" Ezell asks. Aliens, he says, should not be allowed to "enjoy our freedom if they break our laws to get in." Nor, he contends, should they simply be tossed back across the border: "If you catch 'em, you ought to clean 'em and fry 'em yourself." To do so, he has set up teams of investigators to prepare prosecutions against smugglers and those who enter the U.S. with phony documents.

To Ezell, the stakes in his job are portentous. Although more than a million aliens are arrested along the U.S. -Mexican border each year, INS assumes that at least that many cross undetected. If the border "invasion" is not stemmed, Ezell predicts, "we'll be overwhelmed. We can't take all the undeveloped countries. We'll become one ourselves." Obviously angry about the problem, Ezell wants everyone to share his emotion. "The public gets mad at drunk drivers. They need to get mad at illegal immigrants."

Ezell is especially aroused by those who harbor illegals. That includes officials of cities like Los Angeles, which welcomes self-declared political refugees, and particularly employers who hire illegals. He finds it "an absolute disgrace that it's illegal to come here but not to work here. It must become illegal to hire." Illegal entries cannot be stopped, he says, until penalties are placed upon employers: "Cut the jobs, and you cut the flow."

Although his father is an Assemblies of God minister, Ezell is an outspoken enemy of "clergy smugglers," who grant sanctuary to illegal immigrants. INS agents in Ezell's region have infiltrated congregations in Arizona whose members are being prosecuted for taking in such aliens. The Presbyterian and American Lutheran churches last week sued the INS and other Government agencies for these activities, but Ezell's convictions are firm. "You either obey laws or you don't," he says. "The Bible tells you to obey laws."

A dabbler in sales and real estate before working his way into a vice presidency at Wienerschnitzel International, the California-based hot-dog chain, Ezell had never been in law enforcement. But he had worked for Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns in California, knew both present and past Attorneys General Edwin Meese and William French Smith, and was appointed to his job by Smith in 1983.

Ezell's views and tactics have led to charges that he is insensitive to ethnic problems and prone to wild exaggeration. "He's a scaremonger," insists Herman Baca, chairman of the San Diego-based Committtee on Chicano Rights. The men who work for him praise him highly. "He's a fresh breath," says Ed Kelliher, an INS supervisory inspector. "His aggressiveness is turning morale around."

Reveling in the admiration of his subordinates and oblivious to the accusations of his critics, Ezell cruises merrily along in his Government Chevy equipped with two police radios and a radiotelephone. Talking about his forays down to the border, he says, "I come down to keep the fires burning in me." In truth, it does not take much to heat up this flamboyant INS commissioner. --By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles

With reporting by Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles