INS Predicts Record in Arrests of Illegal Aliens

Reeling from an unusually busy and violent week, U.S. immigration officials said Wednesday that arrests of illegal aliens along the entire Mexican border have increased by more than 40% during the first three months of the current fiscal year.

Authorities predicted that fiscal 1986 will be a record-breaking year for arrests of illegal aliens along the 1,900-mile border. Stating an oft-repeated refrain, immigration officials characterized the situation as out of control and called on Congress to pass some form of immigration reform.

Mexico’s deteriorating economy and the lure of jobs in the United States are widely regarded as the driving forces behind the escalating illegal immigration.

“We must do something to control this border,” said Harold Ezell, commissioner for the western region of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Ezell spoke during a news conference held atop a wind-swept plateau about a mile north of the international border and not far from the scene of yet another fatal shooting on Tuesday night. To the south, adjoining Tijuana’s Colonia Libertad, groups of illegal aliens waiting for the cover of nightfall gathered in a soccer field on the U.S. side, preparing to head north even as U.S. immigration authorities voiced their frustration.

Ezell used the session as a platform to call once more on Congress to impose some form of sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Critics of that proposal have said it would be ineffective and would probably result in increased discrimination against Latino job applicants.

Ezell also criticized Mexican officials for not doing more to deter aliens from crossing the border. Mexican authorities have said they do not have the resources to prevent their citizens from going to the United States to seek jobs.

“There’s freedom of passage into and out of Tijuana,” noted Luis Manuel Serrano, a spokesman for Tijuana Mayor Rene Trevino. “We can’t stop people who intend to cross the borders.”

The high-profile Ezell, who has come under criticism for his frequent media events aimed at dramatizing the problem of undocumented immigration, said he was cool to the notion of posting U.S. military units along the border.

“Mexico is not our enemy,” Ezell said, noting that troops are traditionally used to guard against a hostile power. “Open borders are our enemy.”

Immigration officials are particularly worried that recent record arrests come at what is normally a slow time of year for illegal border crossings.

“That’s what really scares me,” said Alan Eliason, chief patrol agent for the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego, the busiest crossing area for illegal immigrants along the entire border. “This should be our slack time. What’s going to happen in our busiest season, beginning in March?”

During the spring, thousands of illegal laborers head north to work in the fields of California and other U.S. states.

On Sunday, officials noted, U.S. Border Patrol agents based in San Diego recorded a record 3,249 arrests of illegal aliens. Never before had immigration authorities in San Diego reported more than 3,000 arrests in a single day.

Moreover, authorities described last weekend as one of the most violent in border history: Three men, all believed to be Mexican citizens, were killed in separate incidents along the border adjoining San Diego County, officials said.

And Tuesday night, U.S. law enforcement authorities shot and killed a suspected border bandit in an isolated canyon favored by illegal entrants, according to U.S. officials. A Border Patrol officer was also shot but was not wounded, as he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

“I’d say last weekend was the most violent and busiest that we’ve seen in the San Diego sector,” said Eliason, whose territory stretches 66 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. “The increased traffic of aliens and the violence are inextricably tied together.”

Although many border crimes go unreported, official figures do provide some glimpse of the scope of the violence in the isolated canyons on the U.S. side of the border, just east of the official port of entry at San Ysidro. Officials say that more illegal aliens cross in this canyon area than at any other point along the entire border.

During 1985, there were eight slayings in the canyon area, 16 reported rapes, and 16 shooting incidents between suspected border bandits and members of the joint Border Patrol-San Diego Police Department unit that patrols the canyons, according to Bill Robinson, a spokesman for the Police Department. Three suspected bandits were killed in those shoot-outs, Robinson said. In addition, undocumented immigrants passing through the border canyon area reported 180 robberies involving 506 victims, he said.

Officials said they expect the violence to continue in 1986, as the volume of undocumented traffic grows.

Between July and December, 1985, Border Patrol agents based in San Diego arrested 222,834 illegal aliens--44% more than in the same period in 1984. The current record pace will mean that immigration authorities will make more than 500,000 such arrests in 1986, officials said.