Race Track Deal in Peril After Raid, INS Claims

A temporary worker program designed to help Southern California’s major race tracks is in jeopardy because of Friday’s pre-dawn raid on a thoroughbred horse training center here that resulted in the arrest of 119 illegal aliens, a top immigration official has warned.

Harold Ezell, regional commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the results of the raid indicate to him that horse trainers are falling back into the pattern that brought highly publicized INS raids last year against the Del Mar and Santa Anita race tracks, in which nearly 300 illegal aliens were arrested.

“We’ve found the same old pattern . . . the trainers are not making any effort to hire legal aliens or U.S. citizens,” said Ezell, who was at the scene of the 1 a.m. raid at San Luis Rey Downs Thoroughbred Racing Center.

“If they (trainers) think they are buying more time from us, they’d better think again. That’s not the way the game is going to be played,” Ezell said in a telephone interview.

As a result of last year’s raids, which forced the Del Mar Race Track to close for a day at the height of the lucrative racing season, the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn., which represents horse trainers, agreed to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Labor and the INS on a special temporary worker program.

The program, known as H-2, allowed foreign workers to receive special visas permitting them to work at Del Mar, Santa Anita in Arcadia and Hollywood Park in Inglewood, but only from January to October this year. Meanwhile, the trainers are supposed to find, train and hire legal workers. Three of the people arrested Friday held the H-2 visas, which are meaningless outside the three tracks.

Ezell said he thought the program was working and that more than 330 of the special visas have been issued. But Friday’s raid--even though it was not at one of the three tracks in the program--shows that trainers have become lax, according to Ezell.

“What I believe is that trainers think, ‘Now that we have the program, they aren’t going to bother me again.’ Well, that’s not so,” Ezell said.

Neither Don Johnson, head of the Arcadia-based HBPA, nor the association’s treasurer, Doug Atkins, was available for comment.

Ezell and other immigration officials said living conditions at San Luis Rey Downs were “deplorable.” Many of the illegal aliens, they said, were living in small sheds with little or no ventilation. Some were in two-story buildings without fire escapes. And still others were living in rooms that were locked from the outside, preventing them from leaving.

Richard Ramirez, assistant chief of the San Diego County environmental health protection division, said the facility was cited for various substandard living conditions last year.

A secretary at San Luis Rey Downs said Don Nunamaker, manager of the facility, was unavailable for comment.

Most of the aliens arrested were working as grooms and exercise riders. Six of the 119 were women and four were juveniles, according to Ed Pyeatt, Border Patrol spokesman for the San Diego area, who noted that the raid was the second in a year at San Luis Rey Downs.

Ezell said that, unless there is evidence that the temporary worker program is working again, he could not rule out raiding Del Mar Race Track when its season begins in July.

“It depends on what it takes,” Ezell said. “If we feel they are still hiring illegal aliens, we are going to enforce the law.”