Illegal Alien Arrests at Mexico Border Plunge

Arrests of illegal aliens throughout the U.S.-Mexico border region declined at a sharp pace last month, bolstering a widespread perception that the new immigration law has resulted in fewer would-be immigrants attempting to enter the United States unlawfully.

In the San Diego area, which usually accounts for more than one-third of all illegal aliens arrested along the border, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded 34,962 arrests of illegal aliens in Aprila drop of 51% compared to the record 71,908 arrests in April, 1986. Moreover, the figures for April, 1987, represented the fewest illegal aliens arrested here in an April--a traditionally busy month because of the presence of seasonal spring employment in fields and elsewhere--since April, 1982.

El Paso Arrests

In El Paso, Tex., the second-busiest illegal border crossing after San Diego, Border Patrol arrests of illegal aliens declined by 35% last month compared to April, 1987. And in McAllen, Tex., where the Border Patrol monitors 280 miles of the Rio Grande, apprehensions declined by 60% in April, 1987, compared to the same period last year.

Along the 1,952-mile border, which stretches from the Gulf of Mexico in Texas to the Pacific Ocean in California, arrests of illegal aliens declined by 21% during the first six months of fiscal 1987, which began last Oct. 1.

Would-be illegal aliens interviewed this week in Tijuana said word of the new law--and rumors of a shrinking job pool and mass deportations--have dissuaded many of their countrymen from making the trek north.

“Half of the men from our pueblo stayed home this year,” said Jesus Mendoza Alvarez, 38, one of 11 men from a small village in the Mexican interior state of Jalisco who were hoping to cross into the United States and find field work near Fresno.

U.S. authorities acknowledge that various factors--such as record high waters along the Rio Grande, a severe winter in some border areas and the economic downturn in Texas--may have influenced the decline in arrests, but they attribute at least part of the drop to the new Immigration Control and Reform Act. The law has made its mark in several ways, officials say, notably by spreading the perception among would-be immigrants that jobs are now harder to find in the United States because of sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens after Nov. 6, 1986, the date the statute was signed into law.

“There’s a belief in Mexico . . . that jobs are no longer available in the United States,” said Silvestre Reyes, chief Border Patrol agent in McAllen, in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. “That’s not really the case, but there is that belief.”

In fact, legal sanctions against employers who hire illegal aliens are not even being enforced until June 1; first-time violators will only be given citations during the first year of enforcement.

Nonetheless, migrants, smugglers and others interviewed at one of Tijuana’s principal staging areas for illegal aliens this week acknowledged that illicit crossings are on the decline. As the sun went down on a recent evening in a border area known as Canyon Zapata in Tijuana and as the “soccer field” here, there were perhaps 250 people waiting for nightfall to cross into the United States, compared to springtime crowds of up to 700 or more in recent years. Business was slack at the many stalls selling food, clothing and other items near a smoldering dump and Dead Man’s Canyon, a gully named for the occasional discoveries of bodies.

Jesus Mendoza Alvarez, and his colleagues said they had traveled more than 1,400 miles by bus to arrive in Tijuana and an opportunity for work in the United States. Most had been here before; Mendoza boasted that he had crossed 11 times. On three previous attempts to cross the border this week, the group had been arrested by the Border Patrol in San Diego and returned to Mexico. Standing on a dirt track in the rugged canyon, they said they were determined to try again this night. As they had frequently returned to Mexico, none would legally qualify for the new amnesty provisions.

“Everyone’s heard about the new law,” said Mendoza, a father of five who carried a small red gym bag containing most of his belongings, “but we decided to come and see for ourselves. We only want to work to get enough money to feed our families. “

Lack of Knowledge

Mendoza and other illegal workers appeared to have little accurate knowledge about the new immigration law. “They don’t know many facts; all they know is that it could affect their chances to find a job,” said Eduardo Lopez Ramirez, a researcher for the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City who was in Tijuana investigating the effects of the new law. “Many are very scared.”

From the migrants’ comments, it was clear that word of the statute has spread to the villages and cities of Mexico that have traditionally fed illegal immigration.

“Do you think it (the law) will work? Will we be able to find jobs?” Javier Gonzalez, 38, asked an American reporter as he stood in the canyon with his colleagues. “We don’t want to break any laws; we only want to work. We do the hardest and lowest paying work; it is work that no American would do anyway.”

A man who identified himself as Gilito Martinez and said he worked as a coyote, or smuggler of undocumented immigrants, asserted that business was way down because of the law.

“This is terrible,” said Martinez, who sat on a bench in one of the many makeshift food stalls, covered with a blue plastic canopy, that is situated just over the border on the U.S. side. “My helper and I used to be able to pass (smuggle) 70 to 80 people a week. Now we have trouble getting 10. . . . Tell your President we coyotes are tired of this law!”

His helper, a strapping 19-year-old who gave his name as Abel Salazar, smilingly chimed in, “We’re going to go on strike if this continues! We can’t find anyone to pass to the other side.”

Other businesses were also suffering. Manuela Blanco, who cooks carne asada over an open wood fire and sells it to the migrants, complained that she now can sell only $25 to $30 worth a day compared to up to $100 daily in recent years. “Business is way down,” she groaned as she tossed a tortilla on her makeshift grill, arranged atop a wooden pushcart.

Break in Routine

U.S. authorities said that the recent drop in arrests is the first significant border-wide decline in apprehensions of illegal aliens since 1981. In 1982, when Mexico entered an economic crisis that would be its most severe in half a century, apprehensions in the United States began an upward climb that climaxed with a record 1.6 million arrests of illegal aliens along the border in fiscal 1986. Mexican citizens account for more than 90% of the total, officials say.

The arrest figures are significant because U.S. authorities regard them as the best single indicator of illegal entry to the United States. For each undocumented immigrant arrested at the border, officials estimate that two to five more may have entered the United States successfully. In recent years, the arrest figures have often been cited as evidence of an “invasion” of illegal aliens from Mexico, and the growing numbers gave considerable impetus to congressional passage last year of the immigration law.

Apart from the belief that jobs will no longer be available, officials and other experts cite at least four other factors related to the immigration bill that may account for the drop in arrests along the U.S.-Mexico border:

- Some would-be immigrants may have been dissuaded by the fear that U.S. authorities will be conducting massive deportations of Mexican and other illegal aliens--something that has been denied by U.S. officials but which nonetheless has been widely reported in the Mexican press. Fanning such fears are the still-vivid memories of large-scale deportations of Mexican citizens in the 1930s and 1950s, particularly from the Southwestern United States.

-The lure of amnesty may have prompted many illegal aliens to remain in the United States during the recent holiday season, rather than taking the customary trips home to visit relatives and friends. Such visits--and subsequent illegal re-entries into the United States--could jeopardize amnesty applications under provisions of the law that require that legalization applicants demonstrate “continuous” residency in the United States.

- An important provision of the new law requires that INS officials obtain search warrants or owners’ permission before entering most farms to search for illegal aliens. The requirement has led to a decline in farm-related arrests by Border Patrol agents in heavy agricultural areas, such as northern San Diego County.

- An undetermined number of illegal aliens encountered by INS officials have been allowed to go free because they demonstrated a strong case for amnesty under the new law. Thus, they would not show up on arrest statistics.

However, while arrests may be down, the volume of illegal aliens entering the United States from Mexico is still large.

In San Diego, for instance, the diminished number of illegal aliens arrested in April still amounted to 1,165 per day.

And in Texas’ lower Rio Grande Valley, agents, noting that narcotics seizures in the last seven months have exceeded totals for the last five years, wonder if they have just traded one problem for another.

“The aliens may not be coming as much, but we have a tremendous problem with narcotics,” said Patrol Agent Reyes. “We’ve been kind of on a roller-coaster down here; we don’t know what May is going to bring.”