Orange Police Continue Rounding Up Suspected Aliens

Police in the city of Orange on Monday continued their crackdown on day laborers congregating in the city’s east end, arresting 19 more suspected illegal aliens on misdemeanor violations and turning over all but one to the U.S. Border Patrol for deportation.

The one not turned over was a 14-year-old boy, who, police said, was released to his parents living in the area.

Immigration-rights activists decried the actions as discriminatory and possibly illegal. And a spokesman for the county’s Human Relations Commission called the enforcement actions the most extreme yet in Orange County.

But Orange Police Sgt. Timm Browne said the department has received numerous calls of support from the community, and city officials said the sweeps would continue.

Monday’s arrests boosted the total to 96 people detained by Orange police in the enforcement action, which began last Wednesday along about a one-mile stretch of East Chapman Avenue between Yorba and Hewes streets, police said.

Early Monday, members of the department’s East End enforcement team arrested day laborers for such infractions as littering, jaywalking and urinating in public. Others were cited for such offenses as having cracked windshields on their cars, bald tires and inadequate mufflers.

Day laborers are being arrested if they cannot produce proof of California residency, Browne said. Those arrested are taken first to the police station, where they are given an opportunity to call someone to bring in proper identification. If they cannot produce identification, they are turned over to immigration officers at the U.S. Border Patrol’s San Clemente checkpoint, he said.

The suspected aliens are then given the option by U.S. Border Patrol authorities to return voluntarily to Mexico or have a deportation hearing, Border Patrol spokesman Michael Nicley said. Most, he said, opt for voluntary deportation.

Orange police officials said they launched the enforcement effort after receiving numerous complaints from local business owners and residents about large numbers of day laborers congregating on street corners and creating a public nuisance.

Among the most frequent complaints have been drinking and urinating in public and directing profanity toward store customers.

Since the operation began, Browne said, the number of illegal aliens gathering along Chapman Avenue in search of manual labor jobs offered by passing employers has been cut almost in half, from about 300 to “maybe 150 to 200” a day. The workers congregate in search of plentiful jobs at nearby construction sites.

Linda Wong, assistant counsel for the Mexican-American Legal Defense Education Fund in Los Angeles, said the Orange Police Department is using the infractions as a “pretense” to remove people on an immigration violation.

“That is a clear violation of law,” Wong said Monday. “Local law enforcement has no authority to enforce the federal immigration law.”

Wong added that the police action is discriminatory because only Spanish-speaking Latinos are being singled out.

Orange Mayor Jess F. Perez was not available for comment Monday, despite repeated calls to his offices at City Hall and his private business. But City Atty. Furman B. Roberts denied Wong’s charges.

Day workers are being singled out, Roberts said, because they are the focus of a large number of complaints, not because they are Latino. He said that if police received similar complaints involving a group of people in another part of the city, officers would respond in kind.

Police can legally arrest anyone who can’t produce identification upon citation for a state or municipal code infraction, Roberts said. Orange police in the past did not always request identification from day laborers and consequently were often given false identity information, he said.

Nonetheless, Roberts said he anticipates legal challenges to the city’s action.

“Being in the business of a city is not a popularity contest,” he said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Orange County Human Relations Commission said the city’s action is the most extreme to date by any police agency in Orange County.

“I’ve never seen it done this way before,” said Rusty Kennedy, the commission’s executive director.

Kennedy said the commission has assisted Orange and other county cities in dealing with day laborer-related complaints by holding seminars and educational programs to help concerned local residents better understand the workers. Many of the complaints against the workers arise from what Kennedy called unfounded fears.

“A lot of complaints come out of the public’s fear of seeing so many (Latinos)--predominantly men--all standing together (and) hearing them speak in another language,” he said.

But Harold Ezell, western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said U.S. citizens have a legitimate cause for concern. Merchants and their customers are complaining in communities across the Southland about being “bothered and accosted” by unruly day laborers, Ezell contended.

He added that police in cities such as Orange are being pressured by the public into resolving those complaints.

“If the problem gets severe enough in a community, then police departments will have to do the job of upholding the law,” Ezell said.

But Wong said law enforcement agencies would be overreacting if they were to follow Orange’s example.

“I just cannot imagine those minor infractions endangering lives and property,” she said.