Doctor Blames Aliens’ Fall on Border Patrol : Immigrants: Agency spokesman says injured migrants were not being chased. One claims he was pursued in dark and fell on rocks.

MISSION VIEJO — A prominent Orange County surgeon charged Monday that immigration officials are continuing to endanger illegal immigrants near the San Onofre border checkpoint by chasing them and then abandoning them if they become injured to avoid paying hospital costs.

Dr. Thomas Shaver, the head of the trauma unit at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, was outraged after a weekend incident in which three illegal immigrants from Mexico were injured in a 35-foot fall from a flood control channel in San Onofre State Park, near the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 in north San Diego County.

Shaver said immigration officials should either give up dangerous chases that can result in serious accidents or take responsibility for injuries that occur.

“If the Border Patrol feels it is important enough to chase these people and jeopardize their lives, then it should be important enough to follow through and take responsibility for their actions,” Shaver said. “They know what they are doing, and yet they turn their backs on the whole thing.”

Border Patrol spokesman Steve Kean countered, however, by saying officers had not been chasing the men and thus bore no responsibility to pay for their medical treatment.

Kean said Border Patrol agents had arrested five immigrants without a chase on the eastern side of the freeway Saturday night, near the checkpoint. Knowing that a pipe beneath the freeway there is frequently used to get across, the agents decided to check the western opening, where they discovered that the land at the end of the pipe had eroded away.

At the bottom of the 35-foot drop, they found the three injured Latino men and called an ambulance.

Shaver said the Border Patrol had the three men shipped by ambulance to the hospital but neither arrested them nor contacted hospital officials. All three wound up being treated for their injuries and walking away from the hospital free men.

In an interview from his hospital bed Monday, one of the injured men contended that he and his two partners indeed were being chased on foot by Border Patrol agents. Claudio Nepomuceno, 18, from Pueblo, Mexico, suffered a fractured skull after falling on to a rocky area at the end of the drainage pipe.

“It was dark, and I ran and then fell on the rocks,” said a still dazed and battered Nepomuceno. He said he was knocked unconscious apparently for about 10 minutes and woke up with paramedics surrounding him.

Sitting up in his hospital bed, Nepomuceno had a six-inch gash across his forehead and an assortment of cuts and bruises on his arms and chest. Shaver said the fall had cracked his skull, but the injuries were not considered serious.

A San Clemente Fire Department spokesman confirmed that the Border Patrol had reported the three injured men at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday night. When Fire Department paramedics arrived at San Onofre State Park they were directed to the rocky cliff area by a Border Patrol agent, who then left the scene, said Jack L. Stubbs, a department spokesman.

Stubbs said that is the routine that is followed whenever there are injuries at the park or along the freeway, a dangerous stretch of highway where many immigrants have been killed trying to flee the Border Patrol. The San Clemente Fire Department provides ambulance and paramedic service for that area of the park, the freeway and the Camp Pendleton Marine Base, Stubbs said.

Stubbs did remark that there was one thing unusual about the Saturday night call. For some reason, it came via a private line to the department headquarters at San Clemente City Hall, rather than to the dispatch line, as is normally done.

“The (Fire Department) guys were talking about that Sunday morning, saying it was not the way these things are usually reported,” Stubbs said.

At the hospital Monday, Nepomuceno’s two brothers, Jilberto and Francisco Nepomuceno, 26 and 27, respectively, picked him up and took him to their Los Angeles home without ever being contacted by the Border Patrol. The other two men, Miguel Martinez, 30, and Felix Cortez, 22, who suffered a fractured wrist in the fall, were treated at the hospital and left on Sunday.

Shaver said the three men are typical of many who arrive at the hospital, victims of a Border Patrol chase, but without any one accompanying them other than the paramedics in ambulances.

“These (Border Patrol) agents know what they’re doing,” Shaver charged. “They know how dangerous the area is and that if they chase them they will inflict injuries on them. It’s time they took responsibility for this.”