Santa Ana : Building Housing Rights Group Is Vandalized

The outside walls and windows and a three-foot-high sign on the newly opened offices of a county immigrants rights group were smeared with black spray paint over the weekend in an apparent act of vandalism, a spokesman for the organization said Monday.

Nativo Lopez, an organizer for Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, said the incident occurred sometime after the North Bristol Street office was closed at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and before it was reopened at 8:30 a.m. Sunday.

Lopez said the painters appear to have at first tried to spell out names but then apparently “had second thoughts” about leaving any evidence and scrawled over the entire outside of the structure.

Five obscene phone calls were received at the Hermandad office Friday night, but Lopez said he didn’t know whether the spray-paint incident was related. Vandals didn’t break into the office, but he said the group’s board of directors is considering an alarm system or security patrols.

Santa Ana police spokeswoman Maureen Thomas said that there is no evidence that anyone entered the building and that investigators don’t know the motivation for the spray-paint attack. Thomas noted that Hermandad was one of 10 businesses in the vandalized building.

Lopez said it was the first time Hermandad’s offices had been hit by vandals. “We’ve had members that have had tires slashed, windows broken on their cars, obscene words scrawled on their cars--spray-painted on their cars,” he said. “But never anything to our office.”

Lopez said the incident would not affect Hermandad’s efforts to assist undocumented residents in housing, immigration and other legal matters. Two court hearings are scheduled this week for group members who have been on strike in an effort to have repairs made to their Townsend Street apartments. In addition, the group plans to protest fees and other issues related to the current immigration reform bill when Immigration and Naturalization Service officials conduct a public meeting in February.