Controversy Doesn’t Stop Police Sweep for Illegals

It was just after 6 a.m. Saturday, and the arrests were just beginning.

But within less than an hour, police in the city of Orange had rounded up 10 Spanish-speaking young men. Their crimes ranged from tossing a cigarette on the street to jaywalking to not wearing a seat belt. Their punishment: arrest and deportation.

“We were just going to work like we always do, and we stopped to get coffee and doughnuts,” said Justino Llamas, 21, who was en route with three friends to his job as a carpenter not far from his house in Orange.

“My friend and I got out of the car, and then all of a sudden, the police pulled up behind us,” he said. “I still don’t understand what went on. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

But the Orange police tell a different story.

They cited Llamas and one of his friends for not wearing seat belts. That, Llamas said, was after police motioned them to climb back inside the battered white Chevy they had parked in front of Friendly Donuts near the corner of Hewes Street and Chapman Avenue.

The car’s other two occupants, who could produce no identification, were not as lucky. They were arrested for not wearing seat belts--although the car was parked--and were to be deported as illegal aliens.

“The police just called here and said that my friend was on his way to Tijuana,” Llamas said from his home.

Llamas and his friends were the latest of some 80 Spanish-speaking men arrested in east Orange since Wednesday, when police began vigorously responding to what they say have been numerous complaints about alien transients loitering in the area.

And in a dramatic break with past policy, the officers have begun delivering anybody who cannot produce identification to the U.S. Border Patrol. By Saturday, Orange police said, 77 men had been deported as a result of the crackdown.

The Border Patrol, which has had its own public relations problems over its immigration sweeps, couldn’t be more delighted.

“Obviously, we are extremely pleased that the police in the city of Orange are cooperating with us to this extent,” said John Belluardo, spokesman for the western regional headquarters of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which oversees the Border Patrol.

“We have always told them that we would be glad to remove criminal aliens or troublemakers from their communities. We commend them for their efforts, especially because they must have realized that they were going to be criticized by some activists who are using this for their own self-serving interests.”

But controversy, on Saturday at least, did not appear to bother the Orange police.

“We have gotten a lot of calls from residents commending us and wanting to know where they can write to express their support,” Sgt. Barry Weinstein said. “People want to help us. They think that this is great. They think that the Orange Police Department is doing an outstanding job.”

Sgt. Timm Browne, public affairs spokesman for the department, said that when Police Chief Wayne V. Streed suggested the new policy, “the thought crossed our minds that it would be controversial.

“But I don’t think we are out in left field on this,” he said. “We believe we are well within the law.”

Others, however, are not so sure.

Richard Herman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Orange County, said that regardless of a person’s resident status, all people in the United States are protected by its Constitution.

“They have the same constitutional rights as anybody else,” Herman said of the undocumented workers in Orange. “They have the same rights of due process. I think that this is just a typical case of the police ignoring the law for ulterior purposes. It’s a tragedy.”

For years, hundreds of undocumented workers in search of a day’s labor routinely have gathered in an area of east Orange roughly bordered by Yorba Street on the west, Rancho Santiago Boulevard on the east, Philo Avenue on the south and Spring Street on the north.

Employers looking for carpenters, dry wall installers, landscapers and laborers drive by to offer jobs. And lately, with new subdivisions rising just over the Chapman Avenue hill, the offers have been good.

“We do all kinds of work in construction,” said one job-seeker who identified himself as Jose. “Right now it’s good, there’s a lot of work out there.”

By Jose’s estimate, some 190 men lined the sidewalks Saturday along Chapman Avenue from the Costa Mesa Freeway to Hewes, and 200 more congregated near the doughnut shop at Chapman and Hewes.

But not all the workers were landing jobs.

“Look. Look over there at the Tastee Freeze,” one job-seeker warned his friends. “The police are there now.”

Within minutes, three young Latino men who had unsuccessfully tried to flag down a potential employer on Chapman Avenue were handcuffed and led single file into an unmarked Orange police car. One of the men, police said, had tossed a cigarette onto the ground.

And so it went. By 8:20 a.m., police had cited three men and arrested 10 others for infractions ranging from jaywalking to driving without identification to loitering.

This, Browne said, showed that the Orange police were enforcing the law.

“I can’t believe that people would think that we are just targeting them,” he said of the undocumented workers. “That would be foolish.”

Browne said that because illegal aliens have given false names in the past, police decided that instead of issuing citations to people charged with minor infractions--such as jaywalking--they would begin arresting those who could not produce identification.

“A citation is technically an arrest,” Browne said. “What we are doing now is not releasing (suspects) until they can prove who they are.”

This, Browne said, will save time and money by not clogging the court system with citations issued to bogus names.

Lee O’Connor, staff attorney with the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights in Los Angeles, questioned such reasoning.

“This seems highly unusual,” O’Connor said. “That’s like saying that because people they have arrested in the past have given fake names, that they are presuming that everybody will give a fake name, that they are already guilty. It sounds like a pretext to me.

“There could be problems of discriminatory enforcement (of the law),” he added, “although that is tremendously hard to prove. Even if they do have the power to arrest someone for spitting on the sidewalk, one has to determine that all things being equal, they only arrest Latinos and not whites.”

O’Connor said it appeared, however, that based on a 1979 court decision upholding the discretion of local police to aid the Border Patrol, Orange police were acting lawfully by turning over suspected illegal aliens to immigration agents.

And when news of the controversial program broke Friday, Orange police pointed out that other police departments, such as Santa Ana’s, operated under similar procedures.

But Santa Ana Police Lt. Bob Chavez said Saturday that his department’s policy about cooperating with the Border Patrol was “much different” from that of the Orange police.

“We don’t go out and make arrests on the street,” he said. “We are not going out and doing any sweeps. We don’t do it for real minor things. Our concern is to get the bad element off the streets.”

Sgt. Browne of the Orange police said, however, that it often is not possible to easily determine just who that bad element is.

“Rapes, robbery, assaults are up a great deal,” he said. “I can’t give you specific numbers, but we have noticed a sharp increase, and often, when we have arrested people for rape, robbery, homicide, assaults, they have turned out to be undocumented.”

In the shopping center on Chapman at Hewes, Cecil Pearson of Pearson’s Hardware complained that the sheer number of illegals in the area created a “mob-like” presence that kept customers from his store.

“Sure, I’ve lost business,” he said. “People will pull in here and two or three of these kids will go running up to the window asking for work. My customers don’t know what to think. All this loitering around here makes some customers feel uncomfortable.”

Since the corner became a favorite hangout for illegals about five years ago, Pearson said, crime has increased. But he didn’t necessarily blame the Latinos.

“The thing is, they are creating a mob,” he said. “A local thief will mingle in there with them and then steal something. We’ve had customers pull up with a mower or edger in their car, come in and five minutes later the mower is gone.”

And some of the Latino day laborers themselves favored the crackdown.

“I agree with the police because this place has just gotten out of hand,” said Lorenzo Reyes, a resident of Orange, who said that many of the laborers have “made pests of themselves.”

“Some deserve to be arrested and taken away,” he said.

Jose said he has seen men urinating in public, ruining flowers and other landscaping on private property while waiting for work.

“But only those that don’t have much education are responsible for doing those things. The rest of us don’t break the law,” he said.

In the meantime, the day laborers agreed that the costs of a U.S. job have gone up this week in Orange. Yet it is a price they still will pay.

“I come from Veracruz,” Jose said. “There I can only find work as a campesino farming vegetables, especially corn. How much do I make? In Mexico, I would earn $2 per day. Here, I can get paid $5 an hour.

“I think I’m going to see what the police are going to do. If it gets too tough, I’m going back to Mexico for a while,” he said.

Another man, overhearing the conversation, added, “Yeah, it’s either that or let’s go to Santa Ana or find work in another city.”

Times staff writer Richard Beene contributed to this story.CARLOS