Pact Reached in Del Mar Dispute : INS and Trainers OK Accord; Races to Resume

Del Mar Race Track officials announced Saturday that a full schedule of races would resume today after an agreement between trainers and federal authorities over the hiring of illegal aliens who work and live at the track.

The agreement follows a bitter weeklong dispute that caused 400 to 600 grooms and stable hands to flee the track, anticipating a sweep by federal agents. A raid Friday resulted in the arrests of 123 illegal aliens. Trainers forced the cancellation of racing at the track Saturday, claiming they lacked the manpower to get enough horses ready for the day’s schedule.

Spokesmen for both sides said the agreement calls for trainers to continue concerted efforts begun last week to hire documented workers and to get legal work permits for undocumented employees who return to the track. Officials for the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agreed to help the trainers obtain temporary work permits for illegal aliens under a program that acknowledges a shortage of legal qualified track workers.

Both sides said the agreement was what they had wanted all along. The terms disclosed Saturday, however, did not include a reduction in the $1,000 to $2,000 bond price for each of the workers arrested in the raid. They also failed to include a system by which trainers would turn illegal workers over to immigration officials to be deported, which was tried briefly last week. Those conditions were reportedly part of earlier talks.

Trainers’ spokesman John Fulton said trainers had volunteered to post bonds for about half of the workers arrested Friday. By posting a bond, trainers can have their employees released from the Border Patrol’s San Ysidro detention facility pending deportation proceedings.

Fulton said a continued shortage of workers means “it will take a heroic effort (for the trainers) to help each other, even though we’re in competition, to get racing going on now.”

Tentative Agreement

Both sides also emphasized that the agreement was tentative. INS spokesman Ed Pyeatt said the Border Patrol has “no plans” for another raid, but he declined to rule out future raids altogether.

The one-day cancellation of racing cost the state about $220,000 in revenues. On a typical weekend day more than 25,000 people attend the track, betting more than $5 million.

The announcement of the agreement went over the track’s public-address system at 5:30 a.m.

“Within two hours, we had enough horses (entered) to run races,” said track General Manager Joseph Harper. “I’m delighted to get this show on the road. . . . What seems to have happened is communication.”

Fate of Workers

Officials of the INS and the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn. had been negotiating for more than a week over the fate of the illegal track workers, while many workers fled in anticipation of a major raid. Last week, trainers had cooperated with immigration officials in the arrests of 32 illegal workers.

When talks broke down Wednesday, INS Border Patrol agents said they would conduct a raid within 10 days. On Friday, 160 agents converged on the track before dawn, rounding up 123 illegal aliens to be deported.

Workers still at the track Saturday were relieved that the racing schedule would resume and hoped their former co-workers would return to lighten their load. Some grooms said they were handling as many as 10 horses instead of three or four and complained that new recruits would take a long time to train.

But track chaplain Izzy Vega, who sat in on early negotiations, said many workers who fled probably would not return even though the threat of a raid has diminished. “A lot of them left saying ‘ Adios, chaplain, this is it for the industry. Management turned us in.’ ”