Alien Roundup Forces Del Mar to Cancel Races

Officials at the Del Mar Race Track canceled the Saturday race card after the U.S. Border Patrol raided the track early Friday, arresting about 100 illegal aliens working as stable hands.

The card had been in jeopardy because of a boycott by horse trainers and the exodus of hundreds of undocumented aliens working in the backstretch.

Trainers said only 25 horses had been entered for Saturday’s nine races. A minimum of 54 horses is needed.

After a meeting of trainers and race track officials Friday, John Fulton, a spokesman for the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn., said it was left to the individual trainers whether to enter horses for Saturday’s races.

Raid Blamed

“A great number of people cannot properly train their horses anymore,” Fulton said. “It’s the raid that shut down the track, not the trainers.”

About 160 U.S. Border Patrol agents raided the track early Friday, making good on threats that had already caused hundreds of illegal aliens working as stable hands to flee, a federal official said.

The agents executed a search warrant just before 6 a.m. in a hunt for undocumented workers, said John Belluardo of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

But by Thursday, many stable hands already had fled.

Border Patrol spokesman Ed Pyeatt said agents expected to arrest up to 300 illegal aliens, but when the sweep ended about 7:45 a.m., only about 100 had been rounded up.

Escape Aborted

Patrol officials said one man tried to drive a car filled with suspected undocumented aliens through the gate, but was arrested after a brief chase.

Following reports of the impending raid, trainers said they could not find enough help to fill the gap.

“Trainers are walking their own horses or trying to get other people to do it,” Joseph Harper, executive vice president and general manager of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, said after trainers announced plans to boycott Saturday’s card.

Bob Frankel, a trainer and president of the trainers’ association, said the boycott decision stemmed from the labor shortage created by the Border Patrol’s threats of a raid.

Representatives of the horsemen’s association and immigration officials began negotiating Monday in an effort to solve the problem, which has left the future of Del Mar’s racing season in jeopardy.

Raid Guaranteed

The talks broke down on Wednesday. Immigration officials guaranteed that a raid would occur and announced that they had obtained a federal search warrant.

An estimated one-third to one-half of the 3,000 workers on Del Mar’s backstretch are illegal aliens, the largest concentration of undocumented workers in San Diego County, according to Border Patrol spokesman Ed Pyeatt.

“We have bent over backwards to be cooperative and it has not worked, so we are going to do what we have to do,” he said.

The Border Patrol has been pressuring trainers to replace the illegal aliens with legal workers, but the trainers have balked at demands to turn over lists of their workers to the agency.

A hiring hall was set up to recruit legal workers, and about 40 people applied for stable positions last Thursday.

Experience Needed

But horsemen said they do not know how many applicants have the experience to care for the valuable race horses.

The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, which runs the 43-day race meet, received only 10 entries for the nine-race Saturday card, prompting track officials to extend the entry deadline until Friday.

Cancellation will be costly to the track and to the state. The Del Mar meet, scheduled to end Sept. 11, generates about $10 million in bets on a typical weekend, with an average of $600,000 going to the state in pari-mutuel commissions.

In addition, the track has a daily staff payroll of about $400,000 for 2,000 office and concession stand workers.