Nationwide Arrests of Illegal Immigrants Rise : Borders: Some experts say the statistics indicate migration from Mexico to United States has increased. Agents apprehended 237,000 from October to December.

Arrests nationwide of illegal immigrants increased during the first quarter of the federal fiscal year, enforcing an upward trend that at least some immigration experts believe indicates migration across the U.S.-Mexico border has accelerated.

From October to the end of December, Border Patrol agents arrested 237,000 illegal immigrants throughout the country, representing the highest first-quarter total since 1987, according to figures from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The number of arrests--considered a rough gauge of actual illegal immigration--was 13% higher than the same period of the previous fiscal year, and marked a second consecutive year of first-quarter increases.

“There’s no reason to believe it’s going to stop going up,” said Dave Simcox, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative Washington think tank on immigration issues. “I don’t see much that could suggest a turnaround.”

The majority of the arrests came along the nation’s southern border, where 207,000 illegal immigrants were taken into custody, a 5% increase over the same period in the previous fiscal year. Of those, 101,000 illegal immigrants were caught along a 66-mile stretch of border south of San Diego.

Verne Jervis, INS spokesman in Washington, downplayed the significance of the first quarter numbers, saying that the latest available figures from the southern border for January were down 7% compared with the same period in the last fiscal year.

Jervis said the national arrest figures for January were not available.

Jervis and Ted Swofford, an INS spokesman in San Diego, said one possible reason for the January decline along the border may be a rumor that began circulating around Tijuana last month. The word was that “people caught by the Border Patrol were going to be drafted and sent to Saudi Arabia,” Swofford said.

“Of course, that’s not true, but it takes a while for a rumor to settle down,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the war, we’d be heading for another record year.”

Some observers believe the upward movement of the arrest figures is because of the increasing savvy of illegal immigrants in using fraudulent documents to beat the employer sanctions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA).

The act, the most sweeping immigration reform in two decades, established a system of penalties against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The employer sanctions were seen as a cornerstone in the effort to stop illegal immigration.

For three consecutive years after the law’s passage, arrests of illegal immigrants fell from a high of 1.7 million to 891,000 in 1989--the lowest point of the decade.

The declining numbers sparked cautious optimism among immigration officials that the country had finally found a way to plug its porous borders. But last year, arrests increased again.

“The word is out that employer sanctions can’t hurt you,” Simcox said.

Jervis agreed that the use of fraudulent documents has proliferated. But he added that the number of arrested illegal immigrants is still far below the record 1.7 million apprehended in 1986, before the law’s enforcement.

“What it suggests is that IRCA has been significantly effective,” Jervis said. “Employer sanctions have been effective in reducing illegal immigration.”