Squatters, City Put Squeeze on Landowner : Migrant Housing: The city says a North County man must clean up illegal alien camps on his property. But he can’t get the migrants to budge and the government won’t help.

Robert Scarcia remembers the first time he ever laid eyes on the Los Diablos migrant camp near Black Mountain Road. He saw rickety shacks made of wood and cardboard that, to him, looked like the pictures of native villages in some National Geographic magazine.

Nestled in a brushy canyon far from the nearest paved road, he saw campfires, their smoke lifting into the crisp morning air. He saw women with timid eyes and people asleep on the ground along a dried-up creek bed.

But there was also an irony to what he saw--the modern-day image of young men congregated around a huge catering truck, buying prepackaged food by the handful.

The sight was an eye-opener, all right. This was a living, breathing migrant community. And it had been set up on his property, Scarcia says, without his knowledge.

“It just knocked my socks off,” he said about discovering the camp in May. “There were these cardboard and wood shacks everywhere and people milling around. There was litter and trash all over.”

So, guarded by two San Diego police officers, he posted 25 bilingual “No Trespassing” signs around his rural 78-acre parcel along McGonigle Canyon. Scarcia, who speaks little Spanish, said the men and women at the camp watched in silence as he pounded the sign posts into the ground.

“The policemen just laughed,” he said. “They said the migrants would pull up the stakes as soon as we got out of sight. They said signs just weren’t the answer.”

They were right. And, for seven months now, Bob Scarcia has been looking for answers.

Since May, when he first learned about the sprawling camp on his land, he has twice met with San Diego city attorneys and health and housing officials, seeking a solution to the problem.

Scarcia is among half a dozen North City West landowners who have been informed by the city in recent months that migrant camps on their properties are violating a host of city health and fire codes.

And, the owners have been told, it’s up to them to do something about it--or the city could do it for them and send them the bill.

That makes Scarcia angry--having to clean up a mess he didn’t make, being held accountable by the government for a problem he says is not the least bit his making.

“I asked them, ‘What should I do? Should I go in there with a machine gun and kill every last one of them?” Scarcia said. “I didn’t invite these people here, but suddenly everybody’s pointing the finger at me.

“My taxes pay the salaries of these city, county and federal government officials. If laws are being broken, then why aren’t the immigration and police people doing something about it?

“The government just can’t run away from this problem. Something has to be done for these people. And they can’t just dump the responsibility on the landowner.”

Bob Scarcia’s problems represent the flip side of North County’s migrant dilemma--the unsuspecting landowner who finds trespassers on his land and who worries about being held liable for what happens to them.

For Scarcia, the investment property he bought 10 years ago with several relatives has suddenly become the local focus of an international problem--that of Third World migrant farm workers and their often inadequate living conditions in the United States.

Now he feels caught in the middle of a tug of war between steadfast city officials who demand that health codes be upheld and farm worker advocates who would like to see migrants have a place to live, free from harassment.

Exasperated by the city’s get-tough approach, Scarcia says he’s an innocent bystander in a fierce social battle being waged on his land.

“I’m caught smack-dab in the middle,” said the 60-year-old retired concrete contractor who lives in a cozy, two-story house in Carlsbad with his wife, Beverly.

“We’re between a rock and a hard spot. If we make these people get off the land, we’re the heels, we’re the bad guys. Well, I don’t want the finger pointed at me.”

Scarcia says he has compassion for people forced “to live like animals.” But he is also concerned about his liability if any migrant workers are injured on his property. There have been several such suits filed in San Diego County this year, including one involving a worker who was badly burned in a fire.

“Sooner or later, these people are going to get wise,” he said. “And then I’m going to be in court, settling lawsuits. In the end, the land won’t be mine anymore.”

Although they sympathize with the landowners’ liability concerns, city officials say that they, too, are lost for answers to problems at the Los Diablos migrant camp.

“It’s a real dilemma, that’s the best way to put it,” said Michael Kemp, a deputy director in the city’s building inspection department. “But the city’s primary concern is for the health and safety of anybody who’s on that property.”

There are actually two issues taking shape on Scarcia’s property, city officials say--the immediate problem of unsanitary conditions and the larger question of the eventual fate of the migrants.

“My intention is to separate the two issues and deal with them one at a time--after all, we’re dealing with people here,” Kemp said.

“We’re not just bureaucrats reading from a code book. We understand that the presence of these migrants is both an international and local problem that the federal government hasn’t been able to solve.

“Well, the city of San Diego doesn’t have the final answers either. But we have had some public safety concerns about the camp expressed by nearby homeowners. And, as a public agency, we can’t ignore those concerns.”

Kemp said several landowners have been asked to voluntarily comply with city health and fire codes. Although no time frame has been set, city officials also have offered assistance once the owners decide on their plans.

“We can assist with litter control and police officers if the owner has problems with trespassers,” he said. “They’d be there to help keep the peace while those actions are being taken.”

If no action is taken, the city can legally clear the property at the owner’s expense, Kemp said.

“As long as we feel the owners are working with us, that won’t happen,” he said. “If not, then we’ll consider the other options.”

Recently, two weeks after a fire leveled much of the camp, Scarcia learned that farm workers were rebuilding their burned-out homes, despite promises from migrant advocates that no new construction would begin until the city’s code violation concerns were resolved.

“Now I’m mad,” he said. “I’ve been in a position where I’ve wanted to help these people and protect myself from any liability at the same time. But now they’re sneaking back on without even telling me.

“I’ve got another meeting next month with the city. And I’m going to tell ‘em I want these people the hell off my property, pure and simple. After all, it’s my land.”

Scarcia says that, as early as next month, he may seek government help to force the migrants off his land. He said he plans on asking migrant advocacy groups to help him get the people to leave voluntarily.

“I don’t have the money to bring in big equipment to level the land,” he said. “I’ll have to rely on the government and the help of these advocacy groups to help reason with these people.”

The Rev. Rafael V. Martinez, executive director of the North County Chaplaincy, an Encinitas farm worker advocacy group, said he is powerless to stop the rebuilding at the Los Diablos camp.

“I’m not a policeman, I can’t stop these people from trying to rebuild their homes,” he said. “I’ve told Mr. Scarcia that these politicians set up their meetings a month down the road.

“Meanwhile, they expect these people to remain out in the cold with no shelter. It’s not going to happen, they’ve got to have someplace to live.” Martinez acknowledged that he donated some sheds to the displaced migrants, but that the recent camp rebuilding was sponsored by another advocacy group.

Martinez said that Scarcia and other landowners aren’t the only ones caught in the middle of a no-win situation. “What about the people who live in these camps?

“Obviously, the time has come where the city is scaring enough of these property owners into believing they have nothing to gain by having these people on their property. And so they’ll move them out.

“But then where will they go? They’ll start again at another camp. They’ll find another canyon.”

Another migrant advocate, when asked if he would help get workers to leave at Scarcia’s request, said: “I’d be very upset if he asked me to do that. I’m not going to do someone else’s dirty work for them.”

No matter what these owners do, the people will come, he said. “They’ll come to find work because the work is here. And they’ll find a place to live on theirs or someone else’s land. They’re not going away.”

Scarcia never expected any of these headaches when he first spied the graceful parcel of rolling landscape in the late 1970s. He saw no migrants then, just wide-open spaces.

“It was beautiful,” he recalled. “There was nothing out there back then but the Evergreen Nursery, nothing between Rancho Penasquitos and Del Mar.”

With the help of a real estate agent, Scarcia, grandfather of two, was searching for a piece of investment property, a nest egg to help him and his wife enjoy their retirement in style. The plan was to buy early, then let the developers come calling when it was time for the houses to be built.

“I liked it because of its location,” he said of the property. “There was a sense of country privacy, and yet it was only 15 minutes from the city. I knew eventually it would be developed.”

The developments came sooner than Scarcia ever expected, but they weren’t the type he had in mind.

At the time of his 1979 purchase, the land was being leased by the Ukegawa Bros. Inc., a North County agricultural firm specializing in tomatoes that used farm labor to harvest its crop.

The farm laborers might have worked on his property, Scarcia said, but none were living there.

Not long afterward, Beverly Scarcia got a call from a television reporter asking what they intended to do about the migrants. The city, it seemed, was demanding that both Scarcia and the growers provide workers with fresh water and portable toilets during their working hours.

“We were sitting in the living room and suddenly we saw our property on TV,” Scarcia said. “The lieutenant governor had come down to get his picture taken on my land, demanding that something be done.

“I had to laugh. Suddenly the city was pointing the finger at me, saying I should provide the help. I said, ‘Why? I don’t grow tomatoes. These people don’t work for me.’ ”

Two years later, the tomato growers moved off the property. For Scarcia, things finally began to settle down. He went out to the property twice a year and built a dirt road on the land for better access.

“I never saw anyone there whenever I went to the property,” he said. “It was just me and the land. The place was deserted.”

Or so it seemed. By the late 1980s, the area had become home to one of the county’s largest migrant camps. During the harvest season, more than 600 people live in the communities that dot the sagebrush slopes along Black Mountain Road.

For Scarcia, that reality hit home in May when he received a letter from the city about the health code violations brought to light by nearby homeowners.

Since then, he has met twice with city officials, who have made clear their insistence on seeing the land brought under code. Now Scarcia feels forced into action.

“I’m a human being, I have feelings,” he said. “But these people are there illegally. Right now, it’s a matter of satisfying the city.”

His wife, Beverly, added: “Basically, it’s tough for people like us to afford to live here. You can imagine why they can’t afford it. So they live on people’s land.

“Meanwhile, the big shots in Washington decide on this grand gesture to grant them amnesty. But that’s it. Now these people are on their own. And they’re learning that the streets of this country aren’t paved with gold after all.”

So Bob Scarcia continues to wince at the immediate future, fearing possible liability suits, wondering what will happen to the camp on his land.

But his liability fears may be ill-founded, according to an attorney who is representing a migrant who earlier this year sued a landowner.

Escondido attorney Terry Singleton said the few suits brought by migrants against landowners represent anything but a trend.

Anyway, by posting his property, as well as notifying the sheriff and local growers that he does not want the migrants living on his land, Scarcia would free himself of any liability, he said.

“If he does that, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that he’d ever be held liable,” Singleton said, “no matter what happened.”

Now more than ever, Scarcia feels like the little guy, a marionette dancing on the end of government strings.

At a meeting last month, he said, a city attorney told him “that it would be heartless” to move anyone during the holidays and that any plans to move the migrants should take place after the new year.

Now, Scarcia doesn’t see anything that’s going to prevent him from having to use police help to forcibly move the migrants out.

“I really see no other way,” he said. “It’s funny, though. In the construction business, I’ve seen these migrant workers throughout my whole career. I’ve seen camps in every canyon and crevice.

“But I never gave it another thought, about the landowners and all that. Because I never dreamed it would happen to me.”