McCarran to see beefed up presence for INS

Greg Tuttle

Thursday, Aug. 10, 2000 | 10:30 a.m.

An effort to stem the flow of illegal immigration in the Southwest will bring more federal agents to McCarran International Airport.

About 20 agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service have started a 90-day crackdown on human smuggling through the airport in what the agency has dubbed "Operation Denial."

The main focus of the operation is Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, which the federal agency has identified as a major hub for the flow of illegal immigrants using airline travel to reach their final destinations.

But INS officials have beefed up airport security in Las Vegas, anticipating the smugglers may avoid Phoenix once word of the crackdown spreads.

The local office has doubled its enforcement staff from nine to 18 agents, who will be deployed full time at McCarran for round-the-clock surveillance. The new agents were temporarily assigned to Las Vegas from California, said Karen Dorman, the agent in charge of the Las Vegas INS office.

Among other things, the INS agents will be watching for groups of people with a lead person who buys tickets on their behalf. Late boardings by groups of people will also fall under suspicion, Dorman said.

The agents "are familiar with the territory and know what to look for," Dorman said.

Illegal immigrants often pay smugglers, known as coyotes in Mexico, up to $1,500 for safe passage into the United States. Increasingly, airports are being used by smugglers as the border becomes less porous, INS officials say.

While some arrests by the INS have been made at McCarran in the past, Dorman said the airport has yet to see a major influx of illegal immigrants. But that could change as airlines offer more nonstop flights out of Las Vegas to cities across the country, she said.

The crackdown also includes an effort to coordinate with the state patrols in Nevada and Arizona, Dorman said. The squeeze of extra security at the airports could mean smugglers turn to area highways to transport their human cargo.

INS agents will respond to highway patrol officers who request help identifying possible illegal immigrants after making a traffic stop for another reason, Dorman said.

The agency is not limiting Operation Denial, which is scheduled to last three months but could be extended, to only Hispanics or suspects from Mexico, Dorman said.

"That is not the directive of this operation," she said. "We are not targeting specific people. It could be somebody from an Eastern country smuggling people in. It could be anybody."