52 Aliens Hiding in Tractor-Trailer Arrested

U.S. immigration authorities Tuesday arrested 52 illegal aliens they said were hiding in a tractor-trailer rig parked along a road in San Diego’s Sorrento Valley.

The men, mostly Mexicans in their 20s and 30s, were waiting in the trailer on Lusk Boulevard near Bear Canyon Road to be joined by additional passengers, all of whom were to be driven to Los Angeles, said Mike Connell, the Border Patrol agent in charge. The trip was cut short when a delivery truck driver passing by reported his suspicions about the vehicle to authorities.

The men were brought into the United States from various parts of Mexico by a network of smugglers, who arranged for them to be ferried from hiding places countywide Tuesday morning to the trailer where they were to be met by the driver, Ruben Gonzalez, 24, of Tijuana, Connell said. Gonzalez was arrested, the agent said.

Immigration officials said witnesses also told them Tuesday of seeing men running out from behind bushes in small groups and climbing onto the truck.

Suspicion aroused

Donald Relucio, a delivery truck driver for Airborne Express, said he had seen the truck parked at the same location on Monday, but on Tuesday his suspicion was aroused and he decided to investigate.

“I walked up to the truck, which appeared to be abandoned, and I heard something moving inside,” Relucio said. “I called U. S. Customs to report this truck, because I didn’t want to take a chance on having something happen like it did in Texas.”

Immigration officials in El Paso, Tex., last week discovered the bodies of 18 illegal aliens who suffocated in a railroad boxcar as they waited for several hours to be transported to jobs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Connell said most of the men detained Tuesday would be returned to Mexico. Some of them would be charged with illegal entry and Gonzalez would be charged with smuggling.

Resurgence of Entries

Officials said Tuesday’s incident indicates the resurgence of illegal entries into the United States after a period of declining arrests attributed to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

The act provides the possibility of legal status for undocumented immigrants who have lived continuously in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982. Those who have worked in agriculture for at least 90 days during a recent 1-year period also are eligible to apply for legal status.

The law also prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal aliens.

In the first week of July, officials apprehended 11,500 illegal aliens in the San Diego area, an increase of 800 people over the same period last year, according to assistant chief patrol Gene Smithburg of the San Diego Border Patrol sector.

Arrests Increased

Apprehensions rose from 29,000 in May to 53,000 last month, Smithburg said.

“The word is getting back to Mexico that growers here are saying the crops are rotting in the fields for lack of workers,” Smithburg said. “(The illegal aliens) are desperate, so they figure they can come here and get a job despite employer sanctions.”

Jaime Torres, 1 of the 53 men arrested Tuesday, agrees that desperation is what drove him and the other men to disregard reports of a strictly enforced immigration law to look across the border in search of jobs.

“There’s got to be at least 2 million people on the other side of the border trying to get to California,” said Torres, a 29-year-old farm worker from Guadalajara. “In Mexico, the best job I can get pays 25,000 pesos ($19) a week.”

Seventh Attempt

Torres said Tuesday’s unsuccessful attempt to enter the state was his seventh in the last week. “Now I’m out of money. I haven’t eaten in three days, and the immigration took away my toothbrush and shaver,” Torres said in Spanish.

Torres, the father of a 3-year-old boy, said he worked as a fruit picker for at least five months in the United States last year and had found work on this side of the border during the last six years.

“I don’t understand the new law. No one has explained it to me,” he said. “I came because I saw an editorial cartoon in a newspaper back home that showed how the crops were rotting in California.”

Torres said he would gladly take advantage of the legalization program if he were eligible and knew how to apply.

“Who wouldn’t want to live in this country?” he asked.