Marines Concerned Over Site of New Border Patrol Checkpoint : Location: Pendleton officials say a new station at Las Pulgas Road would interfere with training. The INS said it will consider another place.

Camp Pendleton officials, expressing “major concerns” that training would be disrupted, have urged the Immigration and Naturalization Service not to build a $36-million, 16-lane Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 at Las Pulgas Road.

Instead, the base command wants the INS to build the checkpoint 2.3 miles farther north at Interstate 5 and Horno Canyon, which the INS will consider.

“We’ve got some people taking a look at the site to see if there would be increased cost,” Duke Austin, an INS spokesman in Washington, said Tuesday.

The Marines are concerned that building the checkpoint at Las Pulgas Road, where it would replace a four-lane checkpoint which has existed at the freeway near San Onofre since 1968, would interfere with aircraft and ground training. Interstate 5 runs through the west side of the huge base where 36,000 Marines are stationed.

The INS wants to build a new and expanded checkpoint south of the San Onofre facility, partly because of criticism by San Clemente officials and residents that high-speed chases endanger their community.

Border Patrol spokesman Mike Gregg said Tuesday that 69,367 illegal immigrants were arrested at the San Onofre checkpoint during the 1991 federal fiscal year that ended Monday. But Lt. Col. Clifford O. Myers III, the base community-planning liaison officer, said the area around Las Pulgas Road is used extensively as a short takeoff and landing location for AV-8 Harrier aircraft.

Myers, in a statement released by Camp Pendleton, said base officials have searched for another place for the aircraft, but “we have been unable to locate an area suitable for the requisite 6,000 feet of hard-surface areas to support AV-8 training requirements.”

He also mentioned that Las Pulgas Road is near an important freeway underpass which Marines use to drive tanks and other tracked combat vehicles to and from the beach, where amphibious landings and other maneuvers are practiced.

Myers was also concerned that the checkpoint would interfere with a Caltrans bicycle path on Old Highway 101, which runs parallel to the freeway.

A letter outlining Camp Pendleton’s objections to a checkpoint at Las Pulgas Road, where construction was set to begin in 1993, was sent to INS officials in August. But it came to light only this week.

INS spokesman Austin said the objections came as a surprise.

“At one time, we were only focused on Pulgas . . . then the Marine Corps came back to us and said, ‘We’ve got a problem.’ ”

Austin said it’s too soon to know whether it would cost more to build the new checkpoint at Horno Canyon rather than Las Pulgas Road. He added that he doubted that choosing an alternative site would delay the project.

“I don’t think it’s going to delay it; we’re not even at the environmental impact statement stage yet,” Austin said. He noted that INS engineers will study the Horno Canyon site later this week.