Breaking Camp : Concerns for Health Force Migrants Out

For years, Guadalupe Pina and her three children had hunkered in the uneasy world of the undocumented.

Home was a ramshackle encampment of about 300 migrant workers scattered in shabby hillside shacks just across a busy highway from La Costa. There, she and the others lived in fear of the U. S. Border Patrol.

Under the new immigration laws, Pina became a legal resident of the United States. But now, she and other migrants at the camp face a new threat. In the coming weeks, their simple enclave in the brush is to be uprooted by order of San Diego County. The reason: unsanitary conditions.

Cracking Down on Camps

All across the sprawling northern reaches of San Diego County the story is repeated. Roused by a proliferation of complaints from residents of new subdivisions, authorities are cracking down on the migrant camps like never before.

But the Border Patrol is no longer the enforcement agency. With the new U. S. immigration law granting legal status to many of the migrants, the Border Patrol has been all but handcuffed in dealing with complaints. Increasingly, the gripes of those angered by the camps in North County are being shifted to the Health Services Department.

Because the enclaves consistently fail to meet county sanitation codes, health officials cite the property owners for the infractions and order a remedy. Invariably, landowners accomplish that task the quickest and simplest way possible--by uprooting the aliens.

The new tack has had a devastating effect on the migrant settlements. Formerly, an alien shipped south by immigration authorities could be back across the U.S. border and in his hooch inside of a week. These days, the bulldozers unleashed on the encampments are proving a far more permanent cure for the complaints of nearby homeowners.

“It’s not just one camp, it’s all over North County,” said Gloria Valencia-Cothran, an administrative assistant to North County Supervisor John MacDonald. “When people couldn’t get a response from the Border Patrol, they started calling the Health Department and complaining about health violations.”

About a dozen migrant camps in North County are slated for demolition because of health concerns. Several others have already been leveled. In Oceanside and Carlsbad, the bulldozers have erased what once were thriving settlements. And, with at least 14,000 migrants living in the back country of North County, the campaign has just begun.

“It’s a very thoughtless thing,” laments the Rev. Rafael Martinez, director of North County Chaplaincy, an agency that assists migrants living in the bush. “Why did they wait until the winter and the holiday season? The main concern on the part of the county seems to be to enforce the rules by the book, apparently not realizing that they’re dealing with human beings.”

Martinez and other critics of the new approach say they are sympathetic to homeowners anxious for a solution to the problem, but insist that merely depriving workers of the only shelter they can afford is not the answer.

They also question whether authorities have truly considered all the ramifications of uprooting the aliens. Migrants displaced by landowners in one neighborhood will simply relocate to a hillside or vacant field in

another, causing new problems and spurring new complaints, they say.

To more effectively deal with the dilemma, advocates like Martinez suggest that the government help provide affordable housing alternatives for the workers, a move they say would dissuade the migrants from setting up camp in the brush.

Local, state and federal lawmakers insist that they have searched for solutions, but suggest the vexing predicament of immigrant housing defies easy and quick remedies. The new immigration law may have allowed migrants to legally reside in the United States, but it did absolutely nothing to assuage their housing needs, throwing that burden onto state and local lawmakers, they argue.

Health officials, meanwhile, say they are sympathetic to the plight of the migrant workers, but that they have a responsibility to address complaints.

“It is tough,” acknowledged Steven Escoboza, assistant county health director. “On the one hand, we feel compassionate about it on a humane level, but we’re trying to balance that with a broader community health standard that doesn’t allow a lot of flexibility.”

In years past, the migrant camps were a wholly accepted part of the patchwork of North County. Agriculture ruled, and illegal aliens were the backbone of the work force.

Today, a development boom is in full swing, and the new housing tracts and custom homes have hemmed in the encampments, creating an inevitable clash of cultures. Homeowners complain of acts of public defecation, of noise, of fights and of crime.

Before, the Border Patrol always served as the enforcer, sweeping through the brush or along streets where aliens lined up for jobs, snagging van loads at a time.

These days, however, the yield is not nearly so great. On a typical tour of North County, agents find that at least 75% of the migrants they stop question are legal residents, according to Teddy Hampton, assistant patrol agent in charge of the El Cajon office, which handles most of the region.

“People either have to call the sheriff or go a roundabout way to the Health Department,” Hampton said. “We have no authority whatsoever to go in there and tell people who are in the country legally that they have to move out of the camps.”

Hence, the responsibility increasingly has fallen on the Health Department. Although the agency has always cited property owners where migrants pose a health threat, the complaints are now coming in at an unprecedented rate, Escoboza said, a fact he attributes to the new immigration law and the increased visibility of the workers.

The obvious solution, authorities concede, is to offer housing alternatives for this new segment of legal residents. But few remedies are on the horizon.

As a short-term cure, Martinez and other advocates have talked about providing prefabricated plastic houses, chemical toilets and bottled water at Pina’s camp, dubbed Valle Verde (Green Valley). In so doing, they hope to ease the Health Department’s concerns about unsanitary conditions while a more permanent solution is addressed.

The plastic houses, which are manufactured by a firm that ships them to Third World countries, stand 14 feet wide, cost $175 and can house a family with two or three children, Martinez said.

That proposal, however, has run aground so far. Many landowners are reluctant to allow the migrant encampments to become a more permanent fixture, fearing liability problems as well as constraints on plans for the property.

More traditional programs, such as aid to low-income renters, are also being attempted. Nine families from the Valle Verde camp, including Guadalupe Pina’s, have applied for rental assistance in nearby Carlsbad.

So far, however, only one family has been placed in an apartment, and city officials say it may be months before the others qualify for the rent assistance, which requires a recipients to use 25% to 30% of their income for housing costs.

“It could be tomorrow, it could be three or six months before something opens up,” said Chris Salomone, Carlsbad housing and redevelopment director. “This is a tough situation. The reality is there should be a special program, perhaps. This was not set up to be an emergency housing assistance program.”

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) has attempted to help out by requesting that federal housing officials release emergency funds, but he has run into a stone wall.

The root of the current problem, he said, is the total lack of funds for migrant housing in the Immigration Reform Act. Although money was allocated for social services and health, the migrant housing issue lacked sufficient support in Congress, a situation that is unlikely to change any time soon, Packard said.

Although state assistance is available for migrant housing, the aid is geared toward farm workers, excluding immigrants employed at construction sites, restaurants or other jobs. County housing officials, meanwhile, have balked at the state programs so far because of high land prices and fears that residents near the sites would protest.

Indeed, homeowners have in recent years proved unwilling allies in the effort to secure permanent housing for migrant workers. On the outskirts of Oceanside, for example, residents protested long and loud when Singh Farms announced plans to erect 352 dormitory style units. The plan won county approval, but now is tied up in court.

While lawmakers continue to grapple with the issue, some advocates suggest that the private sector will have to step in. Only then will politics begin to play a lesser role, they say.

“Cities, counties, all the public agencies are finding this too hot an issue,” said Amy Rowland, director of North County Housing Foundation, a nonprofit housing development corporation established six months ago. “Public officials are susceptible to the not-in-my-back yard syndrome. I think nonprofit groups may be the answer.”

Rowland’s outfit hopes to begin planning a housing project for migrant workers by next spring. Even if all goes well, however, construction would probably not begin until at least 18 months later, she said.

A key hurdle remains the acquisition of land, a tough task along the North County coast, but the group hopes a church or public agency will donate a parcel. To defray construction costs, the foundation will try to tap some of the funds made available by Proposition 84, the state bond program approved by voters in November to help house the homeless.

But other obstacles would remain. Federal loan assistance programs, like the state, are geared for farm workers. There also has been some debate among federal officials whether workers in the greenhouses of the coastal flower industry qualify as farm workers.

Yet another problem may be the migrants themselves. Many have lived so long in the fields and ravines that the life style has become a tradition. For many, the hard-earned wages go for food and other essentials, with the rest dispatched south of the border to relatives. With little left over for rent, the tough life in the brush may seem perfectly palatable.

Packard and others, however, suggested that such attitudes need to change, that the migrants need to leave their homes in the bush.

“They need to take responsibility for being legal residents of our country,” he said. “They have the benefits of working here, and they have to accept responsibility for finding appropriate housing, too. They need to realize that they can no longer live in the boondocks, they can no longer violate health codes, they can no longer send the lion’s share of their money home to Mexico.”

To advocates of the migrants, such sentiments seem all too simplistic. They say the assimilation of these immigrants from a troubled homeland will be drawn-out and complex. They will need help, and housing is a good place to start, they argue.

“It’s inhumane to look at this and say it’s tough, and they’ll have to scatter,” said Osvaldo Venzor, director of Friends of the Immigrant Workers, a North County advocacy group. “As a nation, we have the resources. All we have to do is have the will to say this is not right.”

Back at Valle Verde, Guadalupe Pina continues to serve up her meals each day and to wait for the inevitable end.

The date for removal of the camp has been pushed back several times, first to early December, then to Jan. 1. Health officials have admitted a willingness to push it back further, but Pina knows she will eventually have to move.

“I am very worried, most of all for my children,” said Pina, whose three boys range from 8 to 13 years old. “I worry about someone coming in and throwing us out in the night. Where can we live? Can we find an apartment? We could easily end up back in a field.”