SAN DIEGO COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Bordering on Frustration

When your back yard becomes the runway for a nightly parade of illegal migrants, frustration is understandable. Maybe even inevitable. But no level of anger justifies acting as judge, jury and executioner for a migrant who has done nothing more than cross the U.S.-Mexico border--and a couple of lawns.

Yet that’s exactly what happened in San Diego last week, according to police. Humberto Reyes, a 23-year-old migrant from Mexico, was shot to death, allegedly by a San Ysidro teen-ager fed up with the illegal foot traffic that has plagued his working-class neighborhood for years. Reyes and his traveling companions apparently had no idea they had offended the neighbor-turned-gunman. They initially thought they were being fired on by immigration agents.

Only later did they discover that it was a civilian who had jumped from his car, taken a professional two-handed firing position and squeezed off several shots as the group slowed to scale a wall separating houses from Interstate 5. Ultimately, it was the Border Patrol that came to the mortally wounded man’s aid.

That’s how it goes in the surreal world of a neighborhood that daily copes with the flaws of current U.S. immigration policy. Barred windows and good-neighbor fences topped with barbed wire are as common as kids playing catch. A knock on the door isn’t necessarily a neighbor come to borrow a cup of sugar; sometimes it’s a migrant who wants you to call him a cab.

As the newly fortified border fence is extended, it’s hoped that the illegal migration will be slowed, or at least will find a path through less populated areas. But the freeway--and the quick trip it promises--will always be a magnet for migrants desperate for jobs that El Norte offers.

Anyone who chooses to live in a border-area neighborhood must learn to live with the northward migration that was well-established long before those homes existed. Frustrating, yes. But it’s no excuse for violence.