Valle Verde Migrants Join Ranks of Homeless as Makeshift Camp Closes

The Valle Verde migrant camp was effectively closed Wednesday, but county health officials who succeeded in shutting it down because of health hazards came under a hail of criticism that they have only spread the problem of homeless aliens to other areas.

Late Wednesday afternoon, fewer than 10 plywood hooches and 25 people remained at the once sprawling camp, where as many as 200 aliens lived during the summer months. The camp was founded about a decade ago on a ridgeline across El Camino Real from La Costa. The primitive hovels were made from scrap wood and A-frames of plastic sheeting, and were camouflaged with chaparral.

“Se acabo Valle Verde. (Valle Verde is finished),” said Francisco Villa, who said he had lived at the camp for five years.

Declared a Health Hazard

County health officials, reacting to many complaints from nearby residents, declared the camp a health hazard in November and ordered the property owner to evict the aliens and raze the camp. The leaseholders, Frank Wright & Sons, a construction company, were given until last Tuesday to carry out the evictions.

Wright and his partner, Daryl (Ben) Benstead, objected to the evictions. The two men said the aliens, most of whom have qualified for the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s amnesty program, were good neighbors and did not pose a serious problem. Besides, Benstead argued at the time, where would the migrants go?

On Wednesday, Benstead, a retired Marine colonel, was asking the same question.

“They’ve succeeded in getting them out of here. But that’s all they’ve done. . . . These people simply moved to another hillside. And soon enough the county will be on their backs forcing them to move again. The county is only going to be following these people around and will not find a solution to the problem they say exists,” Benstead said.

At Valle Verde, Benstead and Wright provided the aliens with fresh water and jobs. The areas to which the migrants moved during the week do not have running water. At one site, men and women must walk about a mile to a convenience store to purchase bottled water.

Ron Yardley, spokesman for the county Department of Health Services, said “we are not following a particular people.” Instead, Yardley said, “we only react when complaints are registered and the health of the community is affected.”

‘A Much Larger Issue’

County officials consider the closing of the camp a positive development, he added.

“This is what we’ve accomplished,” Yardley said. “We now have a very large area that is no longer posing health threats.”

As for the problem of homeless aliens, Yardley said candidly that “it’s a much larger issue that doesn’t have anything to do with the health department.”

“But the migrant camp has elevated the problem to a level of discussion, and the county is now looking for funds that may be available from federal and state resources . . . for migrants who are now amnesty aliens,” he said.

The County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to hold a public forum to find solutions to the problem of housing low-income migrants in North County. A date for the hearing, at which government and private groups will be invited to speak, will be set later.

Meanwhile, the migrants evicted from Valle Verde were busy building shelters on other hillsides.

Roof Painted Green

Guadalupe Mojica Elizondo, who operated one of two restaurants at Valle Verde, bought a prefabricated plastic shed and prepared to start up a new eatery at another site. Mojica’s 14-year-old son, Juan Carlos, dug out a foundation for the building beneath several overgrown manzanita bushes while his mother and two younger brothers waited patiently at the old camp.

As a precaution, young Juan Carlos and several friends spray-painted the shed’s white roof green so it cannot be easily spotted from the air.

Mojica, who had lived at Valle Verde since 1984, said that Tuesday night, the family’s last night at their old restaurant, “was the saddest night I have ever spent.” Paloma Rodriguez, Mojica’s neighbor for the past eight months, said her husband and their three children “have no idea where we’re going to sleep tonight.”

Rodriguez tried to find humor in the desperate situation that confronted her and Mojica as a swarm of photographers and television crews filmed the destruction of Mojica’s restaurant.

“There have been so many photos taken of us over the past two weeks that you’d think we are the stars, the attractions of the mountain here,” Rodriguez said with a laugh. “One of these days, they’re going to see us clean, without dirty fingernails, wearing fine shoes and clothes, and nobody will recognize us.”

Media crews and college students darted back and forth through the camp to chronicle its demise. TV reporters wearing dress shirts, silk ties and designer sunglasses did a quick tour of the Third World-like camp and hurried back to the studios.

Migrant Says ‘Enough!’

Despondent aliens looked with bewilderment as microphones were thrust into their faces by non-Spanish-speaking reporters who looked at interpreters for the migrants’ responses.

“ Ya basta! (Enough),” said one young man who walked away from a reporter.

Two UC San Diego college students, who said they were working on a documentary, caught the “realism” of the camp by picking up a few pans and cooking utensils and placing them on a rough-hewn table for greater impact. A stunned family stood back and watched as the young students shoved a video camera in their faces and photographed their predicament.

The county also tried to get in one more dig at Wright and Benstead. A young official from the county’s Department of Weights and Measures said he had been sent by his supervisor to check Wright’s scale. The young man said his boss had “read somewhere” that Wright was using a portable scale to weigh the wood and scrap metal that aliens were selling to Wright after they dismantled their hooches.

However, the county official had taken the wrong dirt road and promptly got his county truck stuck in the soft sand. Several of Benstead’s migrant employees, who are being paid $5 an hour plus lunch to help with the cleanup at Valle Verde, tried to help the sheepish official until Benstead drove up.

When Benstead found out who the man was and the purpose of his mission, he quickly barked at his helpers to “get away from the guy. Let him take care of his problem.” The man eventually got the truck out, but promptly got stuck again, much to the migrants’ amusement.

He also expressed disappointment when he was told that Benstead and Wright had stopped weighing the scrap Tuesday.