Illegal Aliens : Raid Hit but Men Return to Seek Jobs

One day after immigration authorities raided squatters’ camps and made street arrests near a well-known Westside day laborer pickup spot, scores of men again lined the stretch of Sawtelle Boulevard on Thursday morning waiting for prospective employers to drive by and offer them jobs.

“What are you going to do, you have to work,” said Juan Manuel Haro, 17, one of the few who managed to evade Immigration and Naturalization Service officers who raided the makeshift camps under two San Diego Freeway overpasses early Wednesday. Scores more were arrested on Sawtelle when they ran at the sight of the officers, who made nearly 120 arrests of suspected illegal aliens.

Although the raid frightened some workers as well as employers who frequent the popular labor pickup spot in the midst of one of the city’s most affluent neighborhood’s, those who returned Thursday criticized the raid as “senseless.”

“Why do they waste their time? By tomorrow, half the people they throw over the border will be back. The rest will be back within 10 days,” said Encarnacion Sandoval, 35, standing with a group of friends in front of a row of bungalows at the corner of Sawtelle and Olympic boulevards, where he and other workers and their families live.

‘Little Tijuana’

“All they accomplished by coming in here and chasing people around was to frighten the women and children,” said Sandoval, who lives in the residential complex known as “Little Tijuana.”

Joseph Thomas, the INS deputy district director in Los Angeles, said the raid was conducted with the specific purpose of apprehending suspected aliens living under the freeway overpasses in response to growing complaints from neighbors. Thomas said area residents and merchants complained about the men urinating in public and harassing passers-by.

Thomas added that recently Culver City police arrested three men living under the freeway on suspicion of burglary.

“That’s what tipped the scales for us,” Thomas said, noting that the agency has been targeting criminal activity but does not ordinarily raid day laborer pickup spots.

According to Haro, those who congregated at the makeshift camps tended to be men “with nowhere else to go . . . newcomers with no relatives or friends in town.”

Haro, who lived there two months, said that, like others at the camp, he and a couple of friends were trying to save enough money to rent a small apartment together. It has been difficult, however, because most of the time he is able to find work only one or two days a week, he said.

Sleeps in Car

Haro now sleeps in a friend’s car. According to the INS, the two squatters camps have been cleared of old mattresses and other refuse and fenced off by Department of Transportation crews.

At “Little Tijuana” and on Sawtelle Wednesday, the sight of uniformed immigration officers sent people scurrying. One man running from authorities suffered a leg injury when he ran across the crowded boulevard into a moving car, the INS said. Another, a legal resident, was dragged into custody with the others because, according to Thomas, he was not carrying the required documentation. He was later released.

Others complained of the disruption in their lives. Those who were able to evade arrest complained that they missed a day’s work--mostly as gardeners and in construction. Some criticized officers for manhandling detainees.

“What I don’t like is that they don’t distinguish,” said Abraham Gonzalez, 23, who came to the United States from his native Jalisco about six years ago and lives with his wife and their small child at the complex. “If they want to deport the undocumented, why don’t they deport the undocumented who are bums and drug addicts, the ones who don’t want to work? Why pick on the ones who have jobs and families to support?

“I know they’re just doing their job,” said Gonzalez, who works at a nearby furniture store. “But they should do their job more carefully and communicate better with people.”

Residents at the complex said that immigration authorities periodically conduct raids in the neighborhood but that they have not grown used to them. They said it will take a few days for their nerves to settle.

By midday, however, life at Little Tijuana seemed to be getting back to normal. Children played in dirt driveways between rows of bungalows as their mothers went about their chores, sweeping their doorsteps or doing the laundry.

According to Thomas of the INS, most of those arrested have chosen to return to their country of origin voluntarily. The remaining 20 have requested deportation hearings and will remain in INS detention pending a hearing unless they can post bond set at up to $5,000.

Thomas maintains that most suspected illegal aliens opt for voluntary departure because the quicker they return to their country the sooner they can come back to the United States.

Contending that one out of three attempts to cross the Mexican border into the United States are successful, Thomas added that “depending on how successful” those who were arrested on Sawtelle are, “some may be back today. . . . It’s a revolving door.”