Record 173 Illegal Aliens Found in Truck

U.S. immigration authorities discovered 173 illegal aliens inside a tractor-trailer rig that was stopped early Thursday on northbound Interstate 5 in northern San Diego County.

The group represented the largest load of smuggled aliens ever apprehended inside a single vehicle in San Diego County, according to the U.S. Border Patrol here. Although officers frequently seize trucks, cars and other vehicles filled with aliens, officials said the largest single group ever encountered previously numbered 153.

Also on Thursday, the Border Patrol stopped a truck along Interstate 15 in Riverside County and discovered 73 illegal aliens inside the vehicle.

The two large seizures come at a time when authorities have noticed a surge in the number of arrests of illegal aliens along the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego County, which is considered the most popular crossing point for illegal aliens entering the United States from Mexico. The area provides the quickest access to jobs in the Los Angeles area.

While arrests of illegal aliens all along the border have declined, sometimes dramatically, since enactment of the new immigration law on Nov. 6, officials in San Diego have reported an increase in arrests in June.

Between June 1 and June 9, Border Patrol officials said, authorities arrested an average of 1,371 illegal aliens a day. That represents an increase of 46% compared to the average of 938 arrests of illegal aliens that were being recorded each day of May. With seasonal work plentiful in the United States, both months are busy ones along the border.

“It’s starting to get busy again,” said Harold Ezell, Western regional commissioner for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, parent body of the Border Patrol.

However, arrests thus far in June are still 38% below the record pace set in June, 1986. In May, apprehensions of illegal aliens were down a staggering 61% compared to the same month last year.

Officials have attributed the border-wide decline in arrests largely to passage of the new immigration statute, which has apparently deterred some foreigners from attempting to enter the United States illegally. Among other things, the law makes it illegal for U.S. employers to knowingly hire illegal aliens.

Most of the aliens apprehended Thursday were placed in buses to be returned to Mexico. The trailer was seized at 5:20 a.m. Thursday about a mile north of the Border Patrol checkpoint near San Clemente. After the vehicle failed to stop at the checkpoint, according to the Border Patrol, agents followed it briefly until the vehicle stopped. The driver, later identified as Eduardo Cardenas Ventura, fled from the cabin and into the brush, where he was arrested. Cardenas, 22, himself an illegal alien from Acapulco, was to be charged with alien smuggling.