Neighborhood’s Nerves Tested by Border Crossings : Immigration: Killing of 23-year-old highlights the tensions in San Ysidro. Some residents call the daily stream of illegal immigrants more a nuisance than a threat.

Guard dogs bark all night in the urban borderland where a teen-ager last week allegedly shot and killed an illegal immigrant from Mexico for running through his back yard.

Houses on narrow lots in this subdivision about a mile from the U.S-Mexico border bristle with window bars and tall fences. The pavement is scarred by skid marks left from the squealing tires of Border Patrol vehicles. The walls of cul-de-sacs have been scuffed by hundreds of border-crossers who emerge from the brush every day.

The Robinhood Homes development in San Ysidro looks like a generic slice of middle-class Southern California, an enclave of Asian-Americans and some Latinos and Anglos, many of them military and government personnel.

But its location on the edge of open terrain near the Tijuana River levee, the prime illegal crossing point along the U.S.-Mexico border, makes the neighborhood a strange theater of pursuit and tension.

The tension boiled over on the morning of April 20. Police say Harold Ray Bassham, an unemployed 19-year-old of Anglo and Korean descent, became angry after five border-crossers ran through his family’s back yard. He allegedly grabbed a .25-caliber pistol, pursued them two blocks in his car and shot and killed Humberto Reyes, 23, as Reyes climbed a wall in a cul-de-sac to reach the freeway.

Bassham, who has a juvenile record for stealing a gun, pleaded not guilty and is being held on $500,000 bail. Police said Reyes and his companions did nothing to Bassham other than cross his lawn.

Bassham told investigators that he shot Reyes because he believed that Reyes was a paid “guide,” or immigrant smuggler, who had taken groups through his back yard on several occasions and had recently beaten Bassham’s dog, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jennifer Yackle said Monday. Yackle said police have determined that the dog bears injuries, but do not know who inflicted them.

She also said Bassham’s account is contradicted by Javier Rodriguez, who crossed the border with Reyes and is a key witness to the shooting. Rodriguez says he and Reyes had come to Tijuana from the Mexico City area only a month ago and were making their first attempt to enter the United States last week.

Bassham’s neighbors condemn the slaying, which bears grim similarities to two hate crimes of recent years in which young San Diego County men killed migrants from Mexico.

Some residents expressed sympathy for illegal immigrants, whose dashes through streets and yards have become part of the neighborhood rhythms as much as cars pulling out of driveways and children walking home from school.

Others, however, said they were not surprised by the violence. Although they call the daily invasion more a nuisance than a threat, frustration has been building. They complain about noise at night, trampled lawns, people drinking from back-yard garden hoses, torn-down fences and petty crime.

“I knew it was going to happen one of these days,” said homeowner Roberto Juan. “Maybe not this violent, but I thought somebody might chase some immigrants or throw rocks at them or something. People are mad.”

A Filipino neighbor said there is a group of young people in the neighborhood who resent pollos , the border region nickname for illegal immigrants, and have on occasion banded together and beaten them up.

“These kids grew up seeing these people come out of the swamp every day,” said the man, who asked not to be named. “These kids like to go out and jump on illegals.”

On the more tolerant end of the spectrum is retired Air Force Col. Jerome Hinman, who lives in a house with a view of the Tijuana hills and a nature preserve whose myriad trails lead immigrants fleeing helicopters and all-terrain vehicles to the wall next to Hinman’s house. This turf belongs to the Imperial Beach station of the U.S. Border Patrol, the busiest station in the San Diego sector--which accounts for almost half of all border apprehensions nationwide.

The housing tract represents shelter from detection and a direct path to the transportation arteries of the freeway and the San Diego Trolley, Border Patrol officials said. In addition, the section of San Ysidro across the freeway contains many meeting points and “safe houses” used by the organized rings that smuggle immigrants into the United States.

“We see between 80 to 120 people coming through a day, seven days a week,” Hinman said. “The holidays and weekends they are busy with little children, you’ll see little guys less than a year old. . . . It’s a tormenting thing to see.”

Hinman counts and videotapes the flow. He monitors the Border Patrol on a scanner. He watches with mild curiosity when agents zoom up and round up dozens of people at a time.

But he bears the immigrants no ill will and says they have caused him no problems.

About 6:30 a.m. last Thursday, Hinman was puttering on stockinged feet around a boat in his driveway when six young men vaulted the wall and hurried past him, three at a time. Wary and wide-eyed, alternately walking and jogging, they disappeared between two houses. Hinman did not look up.

Illegal immigrants often cut through back yards to avoid pursuing Border Patrol cars and then make for the dubious safe haven of the freeway, knowing that agents will not chase them there. The immigrants generally do not stop to cause trouble, residents said.

“If there’s any crime element, it’s on this side of the border,” Hinman said. “The philosophy of these people is get the hell out of here, get up north and make a buck or two.”

Minutes later and several blocks north, two other homeowners stood in their driveways and watched the same three migrants climb over a wall to the freeway.

“I used to have green grass,” said 10-year resident Ray Bautista, who is Filipino, gesturing at his bedraggled lawn. “Now look at it.”

Bautista’s neighbor across the street has fought the problem by installing fearsome-looking bales of barbed wire at the foot of the freeway wall. Others have adapted by building wrought-iron fences or leaving gates open to prevent damage to fences.

Roberto Juan, who has bars on his windows, believes that illegal immigration is a factor in crime. He said three illegal immigrants were caught burglarizing his house.

“They pretty much emptied out my house,” Juan said. “Somebody spotted them dumping pillowcases full of stuff over the wall to the freeway, which is unusual, and called the police.”

Border Patrol agents and residents agree that such crimes are committed mostly by youths from Tijuana who head back across the border. Police and Border Patrol agents also said brazen smugglers will sometimes steal cars for their operations.

Over time, residents have learned to discern those two groups from immigrants in the classic sense of the word, who they described as often frightened and law-abiding.

“You’re not going to get any problems from mountain people and the farmers,” a Filipino resident said. “You can tell them from the TJ punks.”

His foremost aggravation, the man said, occurs when “every now and then one of these guys rings my doorbell and asks if he can use my phone. Can you believe that? I tell them: ‘Hell no.’ ”

Nonetheless, he has no plans to move. He said Reyes’ killing was an aberration that had more to do with the personality of the suspect than of the neighborhood.

“There’s a lot of frustration, but not to the point where anybody’s going to whoop and holler” in support of the shooting, he said. “That was a terrible incident.”