Coming to America : Border: Agents deport 300 immigrants a month in a thankless task. To the laborers, it’s a senseless disruption of lives.

Adrian Alvarez, Isais Gordillo and Jose Cervantes were headed to their $5-an-hour construction jobs in Camarillo when they spotted the green and white patrol cars of “ la migra ,” the U.S. Border Patrol.

Their faces froze with fear.

Patrol Agent Michael Molloy smiled. “See how they’re sitting rigidly? See how they’re staring straight ahead? That’s not a normal reaction,” he said, gunning the engine of his patrol car. “Let’s check ‘em out.”

The siren sounded and Alvarez pulled his white Chevrolet to the side of the road.

“Good morning, are you United States citizens?” the agent asked in Spanish. No, they responded.

“Legal residents?” he asked politely. No, they said, looking down to avoid the questioner’s eyes. They were undocumented immigrants.

Molloy escorted them to a prisoner bus parked nearby. They joined 33 other laborers and field workers who had been stopped at Pleasant Valley and Lewis roads that morning. Most were on their way to the strawberry fields. Six women on the bus were going to their jobs at a cleaning service.

The roundup lasted less than 90 minutes. By 7:30 a.m. the bus was full, and the prisoners were taken to the Border Patrol Station in Camarillo. Four hours later they were on the bus again, headed toward Tijuana for deportation.

Every month, the five-man unit of the Ventura County Border Patrol Station arrests and deports about 300 men and women, said Molloy, the patrolman in charge of the Camarillo station.

To the Border Patrol, it’s a thankless, never-ending task--much like trying to stop an avalanche with a shovel. For the hundreds of undocumented immigrants captured, thousands more cross the border, lured by agricultural jobs on the Oxnard plain and other work in the fast-growing cities of eastern Ventura County.

To the immigrants, it is a senseless disruption of their lives. They say they are here for jobs that most U.S. citizens would not stoop to fill. Most say they will be back within a few days.

“Tomorrow,” Gordillo said with a wink as he entered the Border Patrol holding tank made of chain-link fence. “Tomorrow I’m coming back.” This deportation, his eighth, would last no longer than the others, he boasted. His wife and three children in Oxnard were counting on it.

But the price of return, Gordillo said, will probably include several sleepless nights, a bribe to smugglers at the border and the loss of several days’ wages.

The futility of it all makes Molloy wonder about his purpose. “What am I accomplishing? Is it doing any good? Does anybody really care? That’s the big question,” said Molloy as he watched the bus leave the parking lot.

“We have a high turnover rate because our job is very taxing,” Molloy said. “It’s very difficult to deal with the political issues around you. Every night you see thousands of people cross the border in Tijuana. To see that charge night after night every year, it has an effect on people.”

Fighting his losing battle, Molloy jokes with the prisoners about their upcoming “weekend in Tijuana.”

Chatting with his prisoners on the bus, he asks them how many attended mariachi star Vicente Fernandez’s concert in Ventura the previous weekend. Several raise their hands. “We have to support our fellow Mexicans,” shouts a man from the back. The officers and deportees share a hearty laugh.

Gilberto Santiago thanks Molloy for arresting him. “I was planning a trip to Tijuana anyway,” he said cheerfully. His line gets more laughs.

But nobody’s laughing when one of the prisoners, a boyish-looking strawberry picker, breaks free from his captors and bolts for freedom. Officers quickly surround him in a lettuce field. Exhausted, the man surrenders.

“I had to do it,” he says, returning to the patrol car in handcuffs. “I was waiting for my chance, and when I saw the opportunity, I went for it.”

“Heeey, Conejo!” the officers mock him, calling him “rabbit” in Spanish. “You thought you’d get away? Coneeeejo!”

After the prisoners are booked, fingerprinted and placed into the holding tank, Molloy kicks back in his office chair. In his fourth year as the head of the Camarillo office, he has trouble explaining the usefulness of the day’s roundup.

“Well,” he said, after giving it some thought, “our job is to pick them up and that’s what we do. If we don’t do it, we get a lot of complaints. At least I can say we’re doing something about it.”

In his view, illegal immigration burdens the social service network and deprives Americans of jobs. “On the other hand,” he said, “you can argue that these people pay taxes and contribute to the economy.”

He attempts another explanation. “Say we catch a rapist and he’s an illegal alien. If you get raped by a U.S. resident, that person goes to jail and that’s that. But if it’s an illegal alien that raped you, you think, ‘He shouldn’t be here in the first place.’ So it’s like getting raped twice.”

Molloy shares many of the cultural interests of those he deports. He points out that his wife, Lidia, is Mexican-American. His favorite vacation spot is Puerto Vallarta. His favorite singers, Valeria Lynch and Amanda Miguel. He’s got cassette tapes on his desk to prove it.

“The hardest part of the job is dealing with families that are being taken advantage of by the entire system: the smugglers that charge them money to get them into the country; the unscrupulous employers that exploit them; the landlords that charge them rent and then call immigration to evict them; the attorneys that promise to take care of their documents; the people that sell them counterfeit resident cards. Everybody preys on them.

“And for the most part, they’re just here to work. I believe that if they had jobs in Mexico, if they could earn a decent wage, they wouldn’t have to come, because they’d rather be home.”

Inside the holding tank, the immigrants are asking the same questions Molloy often asks himself.

“So who is going to do our jobs?” Cervantes asks. “You don’t see too many gringos working in the fields. We’re just here to make an honest living.”

He was not looking forward to the struggle of the return. “Sometimes you have to spend three days at the border, just trying to get in. That’s three days without eating and without sleeping, three days of constant running and nonstop walking. If the Border Patrol catches you at the border and throws you in jail, then it’s another night without eating.”

It is also an expensive venture, he said. “You have to pay for coyotes, pay for taxis, pay for buses. Everybody charges you $20 for a simple ride because they know you are illegal. In the end, you end up spending all the money you earned.”

Alvarez agreed, shaking his head. “I just don’t get it. If they don’t want us, why do they make it so easy for us to get in? Why do they give us jobs?”

Alfredo Mendoza, another prisoner, said he was depressed about the cost of deportation. “This is not right,” he said, holding his head between his hands. “You come here because you want to improve, you come here to work. Things are not going well in Mexico, that’s why we come. Today is Friday and I was going to get paid. I may lose my paycheck. I may lose my job over this. It’s just not right.”

Jorge Servin, 22, said he was outraged about being incarcerated. “I think it’s pretty ridiculous, what the U.S. government is doing,” he said. “What do they gain by sending us away? Are they going to make blond people work the harvest? Those gringos don’t even come close to the fields!”

Unlike the rest of his cellmates, Servin said he wasn’t coming back. “Life here is very sad,” he said. “I’m very lonely, far away from my loved ones, and I can’t find any moral support.”

Aurelio Jacobo put his arm around Servin. “I understand you,” he said. “I know it’s very hard. We are humble people, we are honest and hard-working, and yet sometimes we have to suffer discrimination.”

Jacobo had just hung up the public phone installed in the holding tank. “My wife is very sad,” he said. “She is afraid I’ll get assaulted crossing back.”

Three hours after being brought in, it was time to be escorted to the border. They boarded the bus once again, this time chained and cuffed together in groups of three. With their hands shackled, they were no longer in a joking mood.

“Adios, amigos, regresa pronto, “ said Molloy as the prisoners boarded the bus. “Goodby, friends, come back soon.”