Landowner’s Evictions of Migrants Halted

When they first traveled north of the border, they lived in the canyons, in a squalid cubbyhole amid the chaparral, like so many before and since. Of late, however, life had started to look up for Andres Mendez and his wife, Maria Luisa.

Last year, the young couple scraped together $650 to buy a small, well-worn trailer. For $150 a month, they rented a spot in a cluster of two dozen campers housing migrant workers on a graded mesa top in the rural outback of North San Diego County.

Andres, 21, worked each day at a local nursery. Maria Luisa planted flowers and vegetables in front of the new abode and played with their toddler, Dagoberto. It may not have seemed like much, but it was home.

“This is like paradise compared to living out in the hills,” said Maria Luisa, 20.

But, a week ago, it seemed that that humble paradise had been lost.

With no warning, the owner of the land that housed the park announced that each and every trailer would have to leave because of a pending city inspection. The choice is yours, pack up immediately or you’ll be moved, the migrants say they were told.

In the next few days, a half-dozen trailers were uprooted, among them the tiny home of Maria Luisa and Andres Mendez.

Restraining Order

Then help came. On Friday, a Superior Court judge in San Diego issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the landowner, Jose Santos of Cardiff, from removing any more trailers from the site.

Attorneys with California Rural Legal Assistance, the Oceanside-based nonprofit group that came to the farm workers’ aid, plan to seek a court order requiring Santos to return all the campers that were moved.

Despite last week’s victory, however, the 50 migrant workers inhabiting the makeshift enclave of trailers, hidden off Black Mountain Road in the rolling hills due east of the teeming sprawl of North City West, will likely have to seek a new home.

San Diego city zoning and housing officials are aware of the unlicensed park and will likely enter the fray in an effort to relocate the aluminium-shelled quarters, albeit on a more lenient time schedule that should allow the workers--most of whom are applying for legal status under the new federal immigration law--a chance to find new housing.

“It’s just a question of buying some time for those people out there,” said Claudia Smith, regional counsel for California Rural Legal Assistance.

Smith maintains, however, that the tenants on the property, like other residents of mobile home parks in the state, are entitled to a full year’s notice, even though Santos never received a permit to allow the cluster of trailers and campers on his property.

The attorney said Santos has “opened himself up for great civil liability” because he evicted a number of the tenants, some of them families with small children, without proper notice. An Encinitas attorney, Patrick Greenwell, has agreed to take on the case once it is past the preliminary stages, Smith said.

No Order to Evict

Santos refused to comment. His attorney, Charles Salter of Vista, did not return a phone call from The Times.

San Diego city code-enforcement officials say their records indicate that Santos was issued a notice June 7 for failing to obtain a grading permit for work that was done on his property, which is slated to become a nursery.

But officials say there was no order to evict the tenants, although the city’s housing and zoning offices have been notified of the trailer park, which is not a legal operation on the site under existing land-use statutes.

“We’re not in the business of running people out of their homes on 24 hours notice,” said Frank Hafner, a code-enforcement supervisor with the city. “We’re sensitive to the problems, and we’re willing to give people time.”

The Rev. Rafael Martinez, director of North County Chaplaincy, a group that provides food and other aid to migrant workers, said Santos should have given the trailer dwellers a few weeks or a month at the very least to find new accommodations.

“Ah, this just breaks my heart,” Martinez lamented as he surveyed the dusty enclave and talked with workers about their predicament last week. “I can’t stand to see the people in power taking advantage of the weak. It just isn’t right.”

Martinez said he considers the ragtag mobile home park to be an effective alternative for the conditions many migrant workers must accept, living among the barrancas and arroyos.

In the trailers, he noted, the aliens have adequate food storage and stoves, beds to sleep on and roofs over their heads. In all, it is a situation far superior to life in the canyons.

Resident Status Sought

Zenon Ramirez, a 31-year-old resident of the trailer enclave, agreed.

Ramirez is seeking resident status under the new immigration law, as are about three-fourths of the park’s residents. Each weekend, he travels to Tijuana to visit his wife and three of his children, who are living there while he works in the United States.

An Oaxaca native, Ramirez has planted grass in front of his coach, watering it with an irrigation system that the tenants improvised out of plastic pipe.

As he sees it, the park is not only close to his job at a local nursery but provides far better protection from bandits who prey on the field workers.

“Living out in the canyons is dangerous,” Ramirez said simply. “It sure is a lot nicer here.”