U.S. Arrests of Illegal Immigrants on the Rise : Workers: The Border Patrol says apprehensions in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties doubled in a six-month period, reversing a two-year decline.

Arrests of illegal aliens are on the rise in Ventura County after a two-year decline that followed immigration reforms in 1986, U.S. immigration officials said Thursday.

U.S. Border Patrol officers arrested 1,375 undocumented aliens in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties during the six-month period from October to March. Most arrests were in Ventura County.

That is more than double the 666 arrests made during the same period in fiscal 1989, said Mike Molloy, who supervises the U.S. Border Patrol station in Oxnard.

Molloy said he was concerned that the increase in arrests is a sign that more illegal immigrants are entering Ventura County--a notion strongly disputed Thursday by local critics of U.S. immigration policy.

“Any time you see an increase in apprehensions like that, it’s going to concern me as an immigration officer,” Molloy said.

Before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was passed, the number of undocumented immigrants apprehended annually in the Ventura and Santa Barbara area had been rising steadily, Molloy said.

In 1985, the year before the immigration reforms took effect, arrests were up to 5,683 for the calendar year, he said.

After immigration reform laws were enacted, the number of illegal workers arrested in the two counties by Border Patrol agents plummeted by more than 76%, dropping to its lowest point of 1,333 arrests in 1988.

Last year, however, the number of arrests began to rise dramatically, as 2,724 people were apprehended by the Border Patrol agents.

Molloy said changes in staffing have made a difference in the number of arrests that Border Patrol officers have made in Ventura County.

One reason for the drop in arrests in 1988, he said, was the loss of two officers--nearly half the five-person work force at the Oxnard Border Patrol station--for three months at the end of that year. Those officers were not replaced until 1989.

This year, Border Patrol agents departed from their regular practice of inspecting workplaces and focused on apprehending illegal immigrants in the Ventura County Jail.

Molloy cited a special program launched Feb. 1 to capture criminal aliens. Since the program started, Border Patrol officers have captured 194 illegal immigrants who already served a jail sentence.

Although the focus on undocumented immigrants in jail is not new, Border Patrol agents have not concentrated their entire work force on undocumented criminals, Molloy said.

“What we’re doing is removing people who have violated our laws,” Molloy said. “We’re removing them from the country.”

A jump in the number of arrests of illegal immigrants is being seen all along the U.S.-Mexican border and in agricultural counties such as Ventura, said Verne Jervis, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington.

“We’re showing increases on a monthly basis,” Jervis said.

Nationally, arrests of undocumented workers during the first six months of the fiscal year jumped by about 37% over the same period last year, he said.

In the past, INS officials have used statistics to indicate the deterrent effect that the 1986 law has had on illegal immigration.

The law allowed illegal aliens who had been living in the United States for years to become legal citizens under a federal amnesty program. It also imposed fines on employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers.

Arrests declined briefly after the immigration law was passed because many of the illegal immigrants sought legal status. Others were deterred from coming to the United States by fears that jobs were unavailable, Jervis said.

“We had a major dip . . . because people truly believed they could not get jobs here,” Jervis said.

Fear has since dissipated as illegal immigrants have become aware of the availability of fraudulent documents that will allow them to work in the United States, Jervis said. The worsening economy in Mexico and continuing military conflicts in Central America continue to drive immigrants north, he added.

However, critics of the INS statistics say those figures have been unreliable and should not be taken to indicate that illegal immigration is on the increase.

They argue that the number of undocumented workers arrested depends on other factors, such as Border Patrol staffing and changes in national immigration policy.

Armando Garcia, an immigration counselor for El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, a Latino advocacy group based in Oxnard, said he has not seen a steady increase in illegal immigrants and questioned the validity of the INS statistics.

“The Border Patrol kept a low profile” during the one-year amnesty program, Garcia said, which ended May 4, 1988. “Now that the amnesty program is over, they are doing their apprehensions again.”

One Oxnard city official said undocumented workers have found it relatively easy to stay in Ventura County without getting caught.

“I don’t think the immigration law has had any effect on immigration. False documents are easily available on any street in Oxnard and Santa Paula,” said Carl Lawson, a community relations specialist who is working to make sure undocumented workers are counted in the U.S. Census.