Health Codes Become New Weapon in Battle Against Migrant Campers

Roused by proliferating complaints by residents of new subdivisions in fast-growing northern San Diego County, authorities are using a new strategy to crack down on camps of migrant workers.

With the new U.S. immigration law granting legal status to many of the migrants, the U.S. Border Patrol has been all but handcuffed in dealing with complaints and no longer is the chosen agency of enforcement. Increasingly, local officials are turning to the County Health Department.

Property Owners Cited

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 are currently 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 backcountry of northern San Diego County, the campaign has just begun.

“Why did they wait until the winter and the holiday season?” laments the Rev. Rafael Martinez, director of North County Chaplaincy, an agency that assists migrants living in the bush. “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.

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 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, they argue.

‘It’s Tough,’ Official Says

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

“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. Homeowners complain of acts of public defecation, of noise, of fights, of crime stemming from the camps.

Before, the Border Patrol always served as the enforcer. These days, on a typical tour of North County camps, agents find that at least 75% of the migrants they stop and 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. While 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 factor 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.

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.

However, many landowners have balked at allowing the migrant encampments to become a more permanent fixture, fearing potential liability problems as well as constraints on future plans for the property.

More traditional programs such as aid to low-income renters are also being attempted. Nine families from one camp have applied for rental assistance in 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.

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 dilemma, 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.

While lawmakers continue to grapple with the issue, some advocates suggest the private sector will have to step in.

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

A key hurdle remains acquisition of land, but the group hopes a church or public agency will donate parcels. The foundation also plans to try to tap some of the funds made available by Proposition 84, the state bond program approved by voters Nov. 8 to help house the homeless.

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.

“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.”