The U.S. and Mexico have announced a $5000 bounty for information leading to arrest of people trying to cross the border illegally -- a move both governments say aims to reduce the rising death toll of illegal border crossers. But critics view the new-national measure as a reversion to the worst abuses of the old west. PNS Associate Editor Alfonso Serrano F. is formerly the editor of El Mensajero, a bilingual weekly published in San Francisco.

Parts of a new government plan, offered as a method for "increasing safety along the U.S.-Mexico border," threaten to revive some of the worst abuses of the old west.

The new program was announced to the press last month by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner Doris Meissner and Mexico's Ambassador to the U.S. Jesus Reyes-Heroles. It is the first bi-national effort to patrol the border.

Ironically, recent U.S. policy on the border is the root of the problem that the INS now seeks to address. Operation Gatekeeper in California and Operation Rio Grande in Texas, introduced in 1993, tightened control on the most accessible routes, forcing immigrants and those who smuggle them in to the United States to travel on more isolated -- and more dangerous -- paths.

There is some disagreement about whether the program has done more than shift traffic. For example, border patrol arrests in El Centro, California have risen dramatically but arrests in San Diego hit a 17 year low last year -- to about half the number arrested before Gatekeeper began in 1993.

But Gatekeeper has undoubtedly increased the danger of crossing. According to the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston, more than 1200 people have died attempting to cross the border illegally since 1993. Deaths due to such factors as drowning, exposure and dehydration have become much more common.

The new program was announced as an effort to reduce deaths among undocumented immigrants. One element involves the posting of warning signs.

However the novel element of the plan calls for civilian pilots to search for undocumented immigrants in border hot spots, including the Imperial Valley, eastern San Diego County in California, Kennedy County in Texas and an area near Yuma, Arizona.

As an incentive, these civilians would be paid up to $5,000 for helping spot and arrest illegal smugglers.

"It's the next logical step in improving life on the border," said one INS official.

But a $5,000 bounty seems certain to tempt untrained civilians to take law enforcement into their own hands. And a heated search for "illegals" is likely to involve not only the undocumented, but anyone who is brown and on or near the border ­ including U.S. residents and citizens.

Violence against Hispanics has increased dramatically since the border became a major battlefield in the war against drugs. In June, a Marine Corps investigation cleared a drug patrol unit ­ working under the authority of the Border Patrol ­ in the death of Esequiel Hernandez. A U.S. citizen from Redford, Texas, Hernandez, 18, was herding his family's goats when he was shot to death. A House of Representatives immigration panel recently expressed dissatisfaction with the investigation and may call for public hearings.

Recent California history suggests the kind of troubles that may follow the INS plan. For example, after the state's voters approved Proposition 187 in 1994, denying education and social and health services to undocumented immigrants, millions of residents, naturalized citizens and U.S.-born Latinos found themselves the victims of intolerance. A 1995 report from the Los Angeles based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights documented hundreds of civil rights abuses against Latinos of all backgrounds -- but more than 60 percent were U.S. residents or citizens.

The report makes it clear that bank managers, restaurant workers and private businesses took law enforcement into their own hands. A Palm Springs pharmacy demanded that a customer show immigration papers before filling out her prescription. At a restaurant in Santa Paula, California, a customer demanded that a cook show his green card, claiming "It's every person's duty to report illegals." In another incident, an immigrant rights lawyer received hate mail with a picture of her face and a target over it that read "open fire" and "Latina scum."

The INS budget has doubled in the past few years, and much of that increase has gone to beef up forces on the border. But increasing security on the border by using untrained civilians as bounty hunters in a volatile situation could turn the border regions into a new Wild West.