Grass-Roots Offensive : Citizens Take Aggressive Tack to Aliens’ Presence

When unemployed illegal aliens began being seen in the upscale planned community of Rancho Penasquitos, Allen Schneid and Ted Bregar reacted like many other homeowners in North County who had been confronted with a similar situation.

They demanded that government fix the problem. But they quickly felt rebuffed by their congressman, their City Council representative, the U.S. Border Patrol and the county health department.

As a result, Schneid and Bregar came to a conclusion that has taken residents elsewhere in North County months of controversy and frustration to reach: Government alone cannot solve the problem of aliens living in the hills and using residential neighborhoods as open-air hiring halls.

Residents have complained bitterly about being harassed by aliens for handouts or work, having their children frightened, and being forced to worry about burglaries and thefts.

“Government is just not equipped to handle this problem,” said Bregar, 36, a fuel supply manager with Caterpillar Capital Co. “The jurisdictional problems of each of the agencies involved make it virtually impossible.

“Each agency has its role narrowly defined and cannot cross over into another’s jurisdiction,” he said. “Residents cannot afford to be passive and expect government to solve their problems.”

Rather than get bogged down in yet another civic task force on illegal immigration, Schneid and Bregar have taken a more aggressive approach.

They have rallied their neighbors to stop hiring or feeding aliens and to convince contractors and landscapers to do likewise. They are also working with police to beef up the community’s Neighborhood Watch groups.

Using home video cameras, Schneid and Bregar have filmed employers arriving in Rancho Penasquitos to pick up day laborers from street corners. They plan to turn over the film and the employers’ names--sometimes taken from the side of company trucks or derived from license plate records--to the Internal Revenue Service and the Border Patrol, which, under the new immigration law, has begun fining employers who hire illegal aliens.

The two activists have also tried to convince a local Catholic priest not to feed migrants living in the hills.

They argued that his kindness was making Rancho Penasquitos a more attractive place for aliens and thus endangering the community’s children. Politely, the priest turned down their pleas.

“The migrants are as much our parishioners as the people living in the new houses,” explained Msgr. Henry F. Fawcett, pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church. “We help them because they are our brothers in the Lord. We reach out to them because they are here; they are not here because we reach out to them.”

At a community meeting last Friday organized by Schneid and Bregar, citizen committees were formed to gather further “surveillance” on people hiring illegal aliens, to discover the names of landowners allowing aliens to live on their property and to explore health issues linked to the aliens’ often squalid living conditions.

About 75 homeowners attended the meeting, along with Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer and representatives from the Police Department, Border Patrol, health department, Supervisor Susan Golding’s office and Rep. Bill Lowery’s office.

Repeatedly, the organizers kept the session from being merely a roast of public officials.

When they do approach government, Schneid and Bregar say, they want to be able to ask for specific action--a cop on a particular corner, a particular contractor prosecuted, a particular landowner contacted by health officials--rather than issuing ultimatums of the “Why the hell isn’t something being done?!” variety.

“We just happen to have reached a flash point a couple of weeks ago,” Bregar said.

That point involved large numbers of migrants congregating each morning at Oviedo Street and Black Mountain Road, across from Sunset Hills Elementary School and on the way to Black Mountain Middle School. Several hundred children pass through the intersection as they walk to school.

“The children were very frightened by groups of men, two and three dozen, standing on the street corner, staring at them, forcing them to walk in the street, urinating in public, making comments at the girls,” said Peggy Fuson, 37, a mother of three school-age children.

Schools are particularly important in Rancho Penasquitos, where homes in recently completed subdivisions are priced from $220,000 to $300,000. Real estate agents stress to would-be buyers that the area is served by the highly regarded Poway school district even though the community is part of San Diego.

It is the North County story. Once-hidden hooches have been dislodged by new subdivisions, bringing upscale neighbors closer to aliens camps.

The decline in agriculture has reduced the number of stoop labor jobs. More aliens are now going door to door seeking work or handouts.

Migrants There First

Jess Haro, board chairman of the Chicano Federation of San Diego, said North County residents should remember that, in many cases, the migrants were living and working in the area before the residents who are now complaining about their presence arrived.

“A few people in North County overreact wildly, and it reinforces the view of many residents that all undocumented persons, all Mexicans, are troublemakers, and soon a whole community is inflamed,” Haro said.

In Rancho Penasquitos, five new subdivisions in the past two years have displaced numerous migrant encampments. Migrants who have lived in the area for years are suddenly visible, and homeowner complaints of being harassed and intimidated have mounted.

After Schneid wrote a letter to San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender demanding action, an officer was stationed each morning across from Sunset Hills Elementary, although he is under orders to leave the corner if a more urgent call is received.

The numbers of aliens have decreased, although Schneid sees that as only a temporary solution.

“We’re the only ones at a group meeting (in North County) who’ve said we want to take action ourselves, instead of just sitting back and yelling at government,” said Schneid, 39, a sales engineer for a manufacturing firm.

A Constant Battle

For three weeks, Bregar and Schneid have used video cameras to film contractors and landscapers arriving in pickup trucks at Oviedo and Black Mountain Road to hire aliens as day laborers. They have had at least one angry confrontation with an unhappy contractor.

“They don’t want to be filmed,” Schneid said. “They’ve started to pick up the aliens elsewhere. Some have arrived in vehicles without license plates to avoid detection. It’s a constant battle.”

At last Friday’s three-hour meeting, attended by 75 homeowners, Schneid sought volunteers to man three other key intersections in Rancho Penasquitos with video cameras and binoculars.

“Who’s mad enough, who’s fed up enough . . . to join us on some of these street corners?” he implored. A sign-up sheet was quickly filled.

At the meeting, Bregar and Schneid brushed aside the reservations of two homeowners that their actions are too heavy-handed and might unfairly intimidate employers from hiring aliens with valid work permits.

Mike Connell, the special agent in charge of the Border Patrol’s station for North County, promised one or more sweeps of the Penasquitos area before the homeowners’ next meeting in two weeks.

Several homeowners said they have become increasingly concerned about the aliens’ presence since the April 24 rape of a 15-year-old girl in Poway, for which five aliens have been arrested.

Connell told the homeowners they were not overreacting in worrying about sexual assaults by aliens.

“I have four daughters, and if I lived in Rancho Penasquitos . . . that would bother me,” he said.

But Fawcett, the priest, who was not invited to the meeting, said the homeowners are exaggerating the threat posed by the aliens.

“I seriously doubt that men who go to Mass and who read the Scriptures and pray are a threat to others,” he said.

For the past 18 months, Fawcett has been providing a weekly Mass and breakfast three mornings a week for the migrants.

“One Mass a week and three burritos is not going to convince someone to stay in Rancho Penasquitos,” he said.

While sympathetic to the parents’ concerns, Fawcett politely declined their entreaties, including one from the principal of Sunset Hills. He has, however, agreed to ask the migrants to stay away from schools.

“We believe our outreach actually helps the residents of Rancho Penasquitos,” Fawcett said. “Not to have any contact with the migrants is dehumanizing to them over a period of time. By reaching out, we are accepting them as our brothers.”

At Christmas, Fawcett urged parishioners to take the migrants into their homes. He has helped the migrants mail home their wages to reduce their risk from bandits or corrupt police when they recross the border into Mexico. He has enlisted a volunteer nurse to tend to their needs, including one alien he recently encountered who had serious stab wounds.

Fawcett has asked Rancho Penasquitos residents, when considering their actions toward the migrants, to remember Matthew 25:40: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it undo me.”

But Fawcett’s admonitions have done little to assuage the anger and fear of Rancho Penasquitos homeowners.

“I told Father (Fawcett) that, as a Christian, I can appreciate what he is doing,” said Fuson. “But by making our community a more comfortable place for the aliens, he is creating a public nuisance and endangering our children.

“I challenged him to think and pray on it. I’ve prayed on it. I have empathy for the problems of the aliens, but my children and my home have to come first.”