Horse Facility Gets Clean Bill of Health : County Charges Against San Luis Rey Downs Now Unlikely

Twice in a little more than a year, inspectors from the San Diego County Department of Health Services descended on San Luis Rey Downs Thoroughbred Training Center in Bonsall and found illegal aliens living in putrid conditions.

It was enough to move Harold Ezell, western regional director for the U.S. Naturalization and Immigration Service, whose agents arrested 119 illegal aliens at the facility on May 23, to observe:

“That place was horrible. They treat the horses there better than the people.”

What the health inspectors found were people packed into tack rooms, storage sheds and stables. Some rooms lacked windows, ventilation and heating. In one case, workers were sleeping in a room that was padlocked from the outside.

County health officials, who had issued a cease and desist order for identical safety code violations after a June, 27, 1985, inspection, were aghast. It was time, they decided, to bring in the district attorney.

Today, 2 1/2 months after the raid, it’s unlikely that any charges will ever be filed. The reason is that San Luis Rey Downs has turned itself around, according to county health officials.

“They are now 100% in compliance. We got their attention . . . that we were serious. It looks like they’ve taken a very definite approach to take care of things,” said Richard J. Ramirez, assistant chief of the division of environmental health protection.

Because of the change, Ramirez said, it would be “difficult to get a conviction,” so the district attorney has backed off.

Among the changes at San Luis Rey Downs, where at any one time 700 to 1,000 of California’s top thoroughbreds are stabled and trained, are the closure of any area not approved for housing, the hiring of 24-hour security personnel to keep undocumented workers from using places such as tack rooms as residences and the implementation of a policy in which suspected illegal aliens are held and turned over to the INS.

The number of people who work and sleep at the training center has now decreased from more than 100 to no more than 10 to 15, according to Garland Stephens, lawyer for San Luis Rey Downs.

“We’re not letting people sleep in any area that is not approved by the health department,” Stephens said.

In the past, he said, illegal aliens who worked at the facility would sneak in at night by climbing fences. That has stopped with the posting of security guards, according to Stephens.

“If we catch anyone . . . we’re detaining them for immigration,” he said.

Stephens, in an earlier interview, said the training center wasn’t responsible for the housing conditions. He explained that San Luis Rey Downs rents stables and barns to individual horse trainers, who then hire and house their own workers.

But county health officials said that wasn’t an acceptable response, and that it was up to the training center to make sure people were not living in uninhabitable areas.

After the May 23 raid, Stephens said San Luis Rey Downs officials were going to explore the possibility of constructing a residential complex at the training center to house workers.

“We’ve decided not to do that,” Stephens said Thursday.