Weeklong Sweep Nets 600 Arrests Throughout Southland : INS Seizes 194 in Santa Ana Factory Raid

The 17-year-old from Guanajuato, Mexico, peeked out of an air vent as his fellow workers watched Immigration and Naturalization Service officers working steadily across the factory floor. Two men clambered up ladders heading for the roof, but most just stood and waited for the inevitable.

In halting English, the youth in the air vent said he had worked at B P John Furniture in Santa Ana for four months. Before wriggling as far as he could into his cramped hiding place, he disclosed his biggest fear--to be loaded onto a bus and sent back to his town of 28,000 in central Mexico.

194 Arrested

Immigration agents raided the furniture factory at Dyer Road and Red Hill Avenue Wednesday morning and arrested 194 people as part of a weeklong Southern California sweep known as Operation Employer. Fifteen Border Patrol officers have been temporarily reassigned for the operation, which had already netted 402 undocumented workers in the Los Angeles area when members of the media began to assemble in a Tustin shopping center at 7:30 a.m. to ride along and view the proceedings.

INS District Director Ernest Gustafson said the extra officers would make a big difference in the number of arrests. “Usually, we’ll end up losing about half the people because we don’t have enough agents. When we pull up, they come flying out the windows and back doors,” he said.

A convoy of at least 30 vehicles cruised south on Red Hill Avenue to Dyer Road, where an official stopped traffic to let the procession through. The roundup began at about 8 a.m.

A factory supervisor who, like most of those interviewed during the raid, asked not to be identified, disagreed with INS Commissioner Harold Ezell’s assertion during the raid Wednesday that the sweep would open up jobs for American citizens. “I think (the raids) are wrong because these people come over here to make an honest dollar,” he said. “American citizens come in sometimes but it’s a grueling job, so they don’t last long. These people are very dependable.”

Nativo Lopez, director of Hermandad Mexicana, a Santa Ana organization providing legal aid to aliens, said he feels the raids are designed to drum up support for a proposed federal law that would impose sanctions on the employers.

“We’ve seen it time and time again,” he said. “When the debate picks up in Congress, the INS steps up the raids to substantiate their claim that this is a major problem.”

Choice to Captives

Gustafson said about 14 sites will be “surveyed” during the sweep and noted that 254 people were taken into custody at the American Lighting Co. in the city of Industry Tuesday. INS spokesman Joe Flanders said those arrested are taken to INS headquarters in Los Angeles, where they’re given the choice of voluntarily returning to their homeland or going before a judge to prove why they should be allowed to stay.

Flanders said the B P John factory has been raided twice before, with arrests of undocumented workers made only one time, in 1981.

He said that most Americans would take jobs at B P John if they knew about the openings. “That’s part of the problem, just getting the word out. We frequently contact the state employment office,” he said. “Once they hear about it, they’ll apply.”

“That’s a fallacious argument. Most of the time, these jobs will just go wanting,” said Amin David, president of Los Amigos of Orange County, an organization of Latino businessmen, professionals and community activists. He said the ultimate solution is for the United States to help rebuild the Mexican economy.

Santa Ana Police Chief Raymond Davis stressed that his department wasn’t involved in the sweep. “I believe 100% in protecting our borders, but we’re just making pawns out of these people,” he said. “The only ones who are going to make any money out of this are the smugglers.”

At the factory, a worker grabbed car keys from a friend as he was led to a waiting bus and then laughed at the thought that any of the arrested people would stay in their native countries. “You know the routine,” he said. “They’ll be back in a few days.”