For Some on INS Bus to Tijuana, It’s a Round Trip

Forget the holidays. There was no joy on bus No. 7821 as it made the nightly run to the Mexican border.

Among its 31 passengers on Thursday night, Chuy Ramos sang ranchera songs while Daniel Gutierrez, decked out in a black Run-D.M.C. sweat shirt, occasionally joined in but seemed more interested in glancing through a copy of the New Testament. Wenselao Avina, who looked much younger than his 19 years, cradled his head and arms on the plastic seat in front of him in a vain effort to sleep.

“This really stinks,” Gutierrez grumbled as he glanced out the barred window.

With New Year’s Day approaching, No. 7821 of the fleet of San Diego-based buses operated by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service continued toward San Ysidro, on the U.S. side of the border with Tijuana, with its human cargo of deportable aliens. Like any other day of the year, the trip this night was just another routine task in the INS’ mammoth job of apprehending and deporting aliens who illegally entered the United States.

Many of the aliens on the bus were captured around Christmas Day. For them, the holidays would be a time spent in INS custody, separated from loved ones and friends in this country.

While applicants for amnesty under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act are granted temporary legal status in the United States, allowing them to travel freely to and from their home countries, the 31 aliens were not so fortunate. Unlike the estimated 3 million who signed up for the landmark program under the 1986 law, the bus riders didn’t qualify for amnistia .

Moreover, the 31 are part of the increasing numbers of aliens who are once again illegally crossing the Mexican border. Since the passage of the reform law, INS officials said, apprehensions had dropped by nearly 50% from a record 1.6 million aliens who were caught nationwide at the time the 1986 act became law.

But since May, monthly apprehensions have been increasing on an average of 20% to 30% along the 1,952-mile border with Mexico, leading some immigration experts to argue that the law’s intended purpose of discouraging more illegal immigration is not working. Figures supplied by the INS suggest that the agency may capture up to 1 million illegal aliens by the end of the 1990 fiscal year next September.

It became clear during the more than three-hour ride on bus No. 7821, a fortified green-and-white Greyhound-type bus with hard plastic bench seats, that few, if any, of the 30 men and one woman aboard were discouraged by the new law.

“Life is a lot better on this side,” said 19-year-old Martin Quintero, motioning to the suburban landscape of Orange County. “There’s lots of jobs that the gringos won’t do. For sure, we’ll do them.”

It’s small wonder that No. 7821 and the other seven INS buses in San Diego logged almost 600,000 miles this year between Los Angeles and the border. Every day and night these buses usually are on the road. There’s always someone to take home.

There was open seating on No. 7821 as it prepared to pull out from behind the Federal Building on Los Angeles Street at about 8:10 p.m. Most of the passengers, including the woman in her early 20s, could sit where they wanted because they voluntarily agreed to return to Mexico.

A group of six riders were handcuffed together in the back three rows of the bus. Recently released from local jails for committing various crimes, the six were to undergo further processing at an INS center in San Ysidro for formal deportation from the United States. Another four who had challenged their deportation also were handcuffed in adjacent seats. They were being taken to San Ysidro for deportation hearings.

“Hey, my wife has my green card,” claimed Margil Castillo, 19, who says he lives in El Monte. “I really am a legal resident of the United States.”

One of the six heard the protestation and scoffed, “Liar! Punk!”

Several others who voluntarily agreed to deportation, verbally came to Castillo’s defense. Profanities and challenges to “step outside” were exchanged, but no violence occurred.

The war of words flared several times during the trip south.

The handcuffed aliens were able to get out of their bench seats but it made the simple task of going to the bathroom at the rear a complicated exercise.

There was no luggage to get in the way, however. The most the aliens carried with them were the clothes they were wearing--T-shirts, sweaters, soiled pants and scuffed shoes--and a plastic bag carrying toiletries given them by authorities.

There was only one rule abroad the bus, except for the obvious one about trying to escape. The painted admonition-- No tire basura --was visible from every seat and the most die-hard environmentalist would have been glad to know that the passengers observed the ban against throwing trash.

During the ride’s first hour, as the bus traveled the Santa Ana Freeway, the mood of the aliens seemed giddy, perhaps prompted by the presence of a reporter and a photographer.

They occasionally sang ranchera songs that brought up visions of a lost love or a good bottle of booze. They hooted at many female motorists and, at one point, clamored for U.S. Border Patrol Agent Maura O’Bryan, who was driving at the time, to pull over for food.

“Hey, there’s a McDonald’s!” one of the passengers cried out. “Stop the bus! I’m hungry!”

When O’Bryan and fellow uniformed agent Mike Quilty, who were separated from the passengers by a security screen and door, didn’t accede to the request, the men spat out profanities.

The bus riders also joked of what they might do on New Year’s Eve. One thing they would not do, they said, was to go home to be with loved ones.

Because of amnesty, apparently gone is the practice of turning oneself in for a free ride to the Mexican border. That no longer seemed necessary now that many amnesty applicants have been granted temporary U.S. residence, allowing them to travel freely back and forth.

Using a wink of the eye or a half-grinning nod, the aliens on the bus conveyed the impression that they might return to the Los Angeles area in the immediate future. They were hesitant to talk specifics.

They were, however, eager to tell their stories. Sometimes in giggly chatter or in somber tones, the passengers said they had come because they believed there was work to be had and decent wages to be earned:

* Martin Quintero, from the Mexican town of Culiacan, where drug lords hold considerable sway, couldn’t find much construction work back home. “Besides, almost everybody there is in the drug business and that’s not for me,” said Quintero, who lives in Inglewood when he’s in Southern California. He had been in the United States for about a year when INS agents captured him a week or so ago. “I was going to eat with a friend when they grabbed me,” he said.

* Chuy Ramos, 19, a wisecracking sort who was born in Tijuana, came straight to the point when asked about why he illegally crossed the border. “Of course, I don’t qualify for amnesty,” he said. “None of us do. But there is still work in Los Angeles and there are still people who will hire us. Besides, having growing up as close to the border as I did, I knew life was better on this side.”

* Daniel Gutierrez, whose numerous tattoos pledge his allegiance to a woman named Rosa, was picked up the previous day in Cudahy as he was working. “I’m making only $250 a week and they pick me up,” he said. “The money is just enough to pay the rent and buy food. Who am I hurting?” Gutierrez, 25, who is from the Mexican state of Jalisco, sheepishly grinned each time one of the bus riders chided him for reading the New Testament during the trip. “It’s my book,” he finally allowed.

* Wenselao Avina was one of six farmhands who were snared by immigration agents that morning while picking onions in a field in Valencia. “There were about 20 of us working there, but I wasn’t fast enough,” said the shy 19-year-old who sported a black baseball cap. From Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city, Avina had only been in the United States four months when he got caught and that morning’s arrest was his first by the INS. “It’s a new experience for me, but I think I’ll have to go back there (to Valencia). There’s work there,” he said.

* Several others who were picked up in the Valencia raid also were on the bus and told much the same story as Avina. One of them, wearing a cap publicizing an Orange County construction firm, said: “All of this is crap. They catch you, they send you back. You come back. And then La Migra (slang for INS agents) catches you again. And the boss still wants you to come back.”

As the bus left the environs of suburban Orange County, the chatter quieted. The aliens glumly stared out the bus windows.

They perked up briefly as the bus approached San Onofre, where the Border Patrol operates a massive alien checkpoint on Interstate 5. They noticed the checkpoint was closed as they passed.

“That may come in handy later,” one of the bus riders winked.

At 10:54 p.m., San Ysidro, 25 miles south of downtown San Diego, came into view but that was not what caught the aliens’ attention. In the background the lights of Tijuana were glittering.

“How beautiful Tijuana looks,” one of the aliens crowed.

That prompted several choruses of cheers.

“Viva Mexico!” one cried out.

“Viva!” the rest answered.

“Viva Tijuana!”

“Viva!”

“Viva La Migra!”

“Noooooooooooooo!”

Just then, the bus pulled into the Border Patrol’s headquarters in San Ysidro to drop off the 10 handcuffed aliens.

After 30 minutes, bus No. 7821 went on to the border, just west of the U.S. port of entry. It took only six minutes to reach a locked gate separating the two countries.

There, Border Patrol agent Quilty hopped out and unlocked the gate, which is part of a 12-foot-high, reinforced fence that constitutes the international boundary at that point. A brown-uniformed Mexican immigration officer met Quilty at the gate and nodded that he knew what would happen next.

Without much prompting from O’Bryan, the other agent on the bus, the 21 aliens who agreed to return to Mexico lumbered into the chilly night air, dampened by a downpour hours before.

They walked through a gate into another world, where illegal aliens are considered folk heroes.

They headed for a cluster of pay telephones, about 100 yards inside Mexico. After some calls were made, it became quickly evident how most of the 21 would spend the rest of the night.

“We’re crossing (back) tonight,” said one of the men captured in the Valencia onion field.

While others waited at the pay phones for calls arranging passage to Los Angeles, four of them agreed to pay $1 each to a taxi driver who agreed to take them to a safe spot near a Tijuana city fire house that abuts the border.

There, on the southern bank of the channeled Tia Juana River, the four could join hundreds of others who congregate there nightly for a game of cat-and-mouse with Border Patrol agents, who were positioned on the river’s northern bank in the United States.

Keeping an eye out for Tijuana police, the four got out of the taxi at the designated spot and scrambled up the 30-foot embankment to the river’s edge.

They began walking west to where others were waiting for the best moment to try an illegal journey. The four immediately noticed the glare from floodlights installed across the way by the Border Patrol.

“We’ll make it,” one of the onion pickers said as they walked to a point where others had gathered for the nightly crossing. It was now shortly before 1 a.m., Friday, nearly five hours after bus No. 7821 left Los Angeles.

“We’ll see you back in L.A.”