ALIENATION IN CALIFORNIA : After INS Raid, the Trainers Feel Like Marked Men

On the race track, California’s horse trainers take a back seat to no one.

For the last eight years, three California- based trainers--Laz Barrera, Charlie Whittingham and Wayne Lukas--have led the nation in purses won. Lukas broke Whittingham’s record last year, then this year broke his own record, becoming the first trainer to go over the $6-million mark.

In the 1970s, Whittingham led the country for four straight years and since then has added three more titles.

Last Sunday at Del Mar, Lukas saddled his 47th stakes winner this year, breaking a 33-year-old record that was held by Jimmy Jones of Calumet Farm.

This year, five California trainers--Lukas, Whittingham, Barrera, Gary Jones and Bobby Frankel--are among the top eight in the country in purses, with Lukas and Whittingham ranking 1-2.

That’s on the race track. Off the track, however, California trainers don’t rank high at all with Hal Ezell, the regional commissioner of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service.

It was Ezell who directed an early-morning raid at Del Mar two weeks ago that resulted in the arrest of 123 illegal aliens who were working as grooms and hotwalkers for many of the 200 trainers at the track.

The Del Mar raid was made almost two years after the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) swooped into the San Luis Rey Downs Training Center in nearby Bonsall and seized more than 250 illegal aliens working with horses there. In the aftermath of that raid, five trainers, the most prominent of whom were Lukas and Darrell Vienna, paid $500 fines and were handed one-year probations for the misdemeanor charge of harboring illegal aliens.

Ezell gave his reasons for the INS raid this summer. “We wanted to send out the message loud and clear, because the trainers are simply not committed to cleaning up their act,” he said.

“Arrogance would be the correct word to describe their attitude toward us. They have been in absolute defiance of the regulations. They’ve been using illegal workers for years, and it’s become an opiate with them. And it’s been hard to get them to take the treatment.”

The raid at Del Mar on Aug. 23 was chaotic for everyone there--the trainers, who, citing a shortage of help, didn’t enter enough horses to enable the track to run a program on Aug. 24; track officials, who have seen a banner season disintegrate into an ordinary one; members of the California Horse Racing Board, who are concerned with the alien problem besides the issue of why the trainers didn’t enter their horses, and the illegal backstretch workers, most of whom have been left without jobs.

An estimated 600 illegals fled Del Mar the morning of the raid. Of the 123 taken into custody, about half were released on bond of $1,000 or $2,000 and have returned to work pending hearings of their cases.

Turmoil continues within the ranks of the California division of the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn., the national organization that represents trainers and owners in most racing states. Frankel, who was elected president of the California division earlier this year, said Thursday that he had resigned. At least one member of the board of directors, Eddie Gregson, has also reportedly resigned.

“I’ve quit for two reasons,” Frankel said. “I’ve got too many horses to train (he runs divisions of his stable in both California and New York) and don’t have time to fight this (the illegal-alien issue). Also, I’m disappointed in the organization.”

Frankel wouldn’t be specific about his disappointments, but Ezell, in his negotiations with the local HBPA, also had that empty feeling.

“Nobody has control of the trainers, that’s one of the problems,” Ezell said. “The HBPA doesn’t have control. It should be a strong organization.”

The trainers generally deny that they hire illegal Mexicans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans because they will work for lower wages than Americans. “After taxes, my hotwalkers take home about $135 a week,” said Ron Ellis, who trains 20 horses at Del Mar. “But that’s for working only about four hours a day. My grooms, they clear about $250 a week.”

The trainers say that good American help isn’t available. “A groom isn’t just a person who leads a horse around on a shank,” Brian Sweeney said. “He’s a specialist, and darned important to the trainer and the horse.”

Sweeney, an owner who obtained his training license late last year, raced Erins Isle, who won major stakes at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park before he retired with earnings of $1.2 million. Born in Shanghai and schooled in Ireland, Sweeney came to California from Canada in 1968, when he needed a “green card,” the same kind of permit that’s required for backstretch employees to work legally.

“I had the advantage of being able to speak the language,” Sweeney said. “The Mexicans who have worked at the track for 7, 10, even 20 years, they have no command of the language. They don’t understand how to get their cards, and they’re afraid to bring it up for fear they’ll be sent home.”

Salvador Gonzalez, the Mexican-born son of a groom, has been rubbing horses for trainer Ray Bell Jr. for about seven years and was the groom for the stakes-winning Barberstown. Gonzalez, 28, was one of the 123 workers taken into custody by the INS on Aug. 23 and spent four days in a holding facility before Bell paid a $1,000 bond that has enabled him to return to work.

Through an interpreter, Gonzales said he had attempted to obtain his green card. “I kept paying and paying lawyers and nothing happened,” he said. “You need an American who is willing to help you sign and be responsible for you. But it is hard to find an American who will be responsible.”

Sweeney shuddered at the memory of what happened at Del Mar during the raid.

“I felt so badly for the grooms that day,” he said. “They were hiding and running. They were subjected to terrible indignities. But I have no argument with the INS. They were just doing their jobs. We haven’t taken the time to address our problems. The trainers don’t understand the labor laws. The grooms don’t understand the immigration laws. I myself should have known more about the laws.”

Sweeney hopes that the California Horse Racing Board will take a leadership role in solving the problems. Ezell says the racing board, which must license track employees before they can work, should tighten its screening process.

“The workers we have are good people, and we can’t afford to lose them,” Sweeney said. “And they can be teachers for younger grooms.”

Some of the grooms, anticipating the raid, left before the government agents arrived. A groom for Whittingham, who had rubbed Greinton this year and Perrault, the male turf champion in 1982, fled several days before the Budweiser-Arlington Million at Arlington Park near Chicago on Aug. 25. Had he stayed, he would have been eligible for a 1% share of the $200,000 Greinton earned for finishing second in the Million.

Ezell believes that the trainers could profit by meeting with the Western Range Assn., an organization of sheepherders who have successfully brought about 900 workers here from Mexico to work within the law. He mentioned this possibility two years ago, but the horsemen have been reluctant to pursue it, because they feel their business is so different.

Even Sweeney, a thoughtful, perceptive man, sees little parallel. “We’re not like the sheepherders,” he said. “We’re not like the lettuce pickers and the strawberry pickers. You can bruise fruit and get away with it. But if a groom bruises a million-dollar horse, that could be the end of the animal. Some of the workers who have been brought in through necessity in recent weeks are enough to frighten you. They are terrified, because they’re holding a horse by his shank for the first time in their life.”

Like Sweeney, Ellis says that the INS Border Patrol agents shouldn’t be made the fall guys. “It’s not their fault, they just did what they had to do,” Ellis said. “You get a traffic ticket, you can’t argue with the cop, but you plead your case before the judge. This is the same thing. Our argument isn’t with the INS, it should be with the government. We should be convincing the legislature that we’re in a unique business and need this specialized help.”

Without solutions, California trainers will go on being marked men--and women--the country over. The same week as the raid at Del Mar, INS agents seized 10 stable workers at Canterbury Downs, a new track near Minneapolis. The 10 worked for Kathy Hutchinson, Lee Rossi and Chuck Taliaferro--California trainers running horses at Canterbury.

“The INS went to all the barns,” said Stan Bowker, general manager at Canterbury. “But the only illegal aliens they found were the ones working for the trainers with the California connections. When I worked at Ak-Sar-Ben (in Omaha) and those agents came around, the first barn they’d check would be Wayne Lukas’.”

As the end of the Del Mar season approaches next Wednesday, horsemen will remember this summer with discontent. Some of them, including Frankel and Hector Palma, say they won’t be back next year, although time seems to be a quicker cure in racing than it is in many parts of life.

“I won’t be back,” Palma said. “Besides all the outside problems, I’ve had jockeys thrown by horses and horses breaking down. It’s been one thing after another, and the expense of coming to Del Mar isn’t worth it.”

Palma also is one of more than 30 trainers being investigated by the Department of Labor for violations of minimum-wage laws.

“Sometimes you don’t have on paper what you actually pay a groom,” Sweeney said. “They usually bet the horse they rub, and when they lose, that leaves them short. So maybe you give them 30 bucks right there on the track. They appreciate it more then than in the next paycheck.”