Encinitas Hires Security Guards to Rout Migrants

Acknowledging the failure of its efforts to drive scores of Guatemalan migrant laborers from their encampment on a small tract of city-owned land, Encinitas will spend $31,000 over the next three months to post unarmed security guards at the site.

In a decision Tuesday by the Encinitas Sanitary District, which owns the 18 acres of eucalyptus, bamboo and thick brush behind the Big Bear Market on Encinitas Boulevard, City Manager Warren Shafer will negotiate with a Carlsbad security firm to begin patrolling the land 24 hours a day for at least the first week.

The firm, Carlsbad Security Patrol, will then meet with Shafer to re-evaluate whether to cut down its efforts to 16 hours a day, using bilingual security guards to put the message out to migrants that their presence will not be tolerated. Board members voted, 3 to 2, to begin the patrols as soon as an agreement with the security firm can be worked out.

The sanitary district board, composed of the city’s five council members, was told that more than $25,000 paid to a Vista company for cleanup efforts over the last year had not discouraged the migrants from establishing makeshift camps in the secluded brush behind the store complex.

During the day, scores of men line the sidewalks and roadside soliciting day labor, causing local retailers to complain that their presence has dramatically hurt business.

“The site is cleaner because we’re cleaning it on a daily basis,” said board member Rick Shea. “But the number of people who live there has not decreased.”

The Guatemalan camp issue has become a major test for this North County coastal city in its efforts to control the influx of migrant laborers from Mexico and Central America, whose hastily constructed camps stand in stark contrast--and often within several hundred feet of--upscale housing tracts and condominium complexes.

In January, the sanitary district voted to dramatically step up its cleanup efforts on the property--increasing its sanitation patrols of the area from twice monthly to daily.

Last April, Target Services of Vista not only began hauling away trash and feces from the area, but workers also dismantled makeshift shanties and hooches erected by about 100 Guatemalans who live there.

Over the past several weeks, however, the city-contracted crew has become almost a constant presence, waging regular cleanup patrols on the small tract just west of Interstate 5. But the workers persist in living on the property.

Sanitary district board members nonetheless have insisted that the city’s efforts to manage the property are intended as a message to homeowners struggling with their own cleanup efforts at nearby migrant camps.

“The city is setting the standard for its residents,” board member Gail Hano said before Tuesday’s meeting. “If we can’t police our own back yard, how can we ask our residents to police theirs?”

At Tuesday’s meeting, board members were given a lesson in dealing with uncooperative migrant workers from three of the five security companies that had filed bids for their business.

Joseph Canales, owner of Carlsbad Security Patrol, told the board that bilingual guards were necessary to read migrants their rights in the case of a trespassing arrest and to translate signs ordering them from the property.

“A lot of these migrants don’t know how to read, even if the sign is in Spanish,” he said. “We have to speak their language to tell them that it doesn’t matter if they’re white or Mexican or what, the property’s off-limits.”

Canales, who said he had 12 years’ experience patrolling migrant farm-worker areas, said that two guards are needed because the job is dangerous at night.

“You got to know their lifestyle, especially if they’re drunk--it’s dangerous,” he said. “If they’re sober, they’ll work hard for you, they’ll give you the shirts off their backs.

“But, when they’re drunk, they cut each other up sometimes, good friends and cousins will hurt each other.”

He added, however, that the guards need not be armed as long as they patrol in pairs. They will be instructed to back off from potential conflicts and report them to the Sheriff’s Department, he said.

Board member Marjorie Gaines told the board that two deaths have been attributed to migrant violence in the past year at the site. She said prostitutes are also a problem in the area at night.

Canales told the board that the area is a major stopover for migrant smugglers--or “coyotes”--who unload their passengers on the east side of Interstate 5. The men then cross under the freeway to the camp through a storm drainage pipe, he said.

Gaines said several road maps had been found during cleanups of the camps, indicating that the workers had been given instructions on how to find Encinitas even before they left Guatemala.

All three security firm representatives warned the board that, although the situation will improve immediately with the patrols, the security will have to be continued indefinitely to be effective.

“There’s the factor of the constant influx of newcomers who don’t know anything about the efforts,” Canales said. “And, even if you move them from one place, they’ll go to another. But it’s a start.”

Anne Omsted voted against the move, questioning how long the sanitary district is willing to keep paying to solve the problem.

“We’re talking full-time security guards for the rest of our lives,” she said. “I’m not convinced it’s going to work. If we’re going to have this kind of avalanche of migrant laborers, I think it’s better to have them sleep on public land rather than in the back yards of private citizen.

Board member Rick Shea, who also voted against the measure, said he is troubled by the treatment of workers at the hands of the city-contracted crews that regularly dispose of the migrants’ belongings while they’re away at work.

“Apart from our jobs as politicians, as a human being I feel sympathy for these poor unfortunate people who come to the land of opportunity to get work, only to have the government pick up their plastic bags with all their belongings in the world and throw it away,” he said.

“I mean, we’re a nation of illegal aliens. Ask the Indians what they think of what we’re doing with their land.”

The issue of what to do about the migrant laborers Tuesday divided the sanitary district board, as it has much of the entire North County.

“It’s ridiculous to spend taxpayers’ money cleaning up after people who don’t belong on the property to begin with,” board member Gail Hano said.

She said an unarmed security firm would be an assertive way of handling the problem--keeping migrants off of the property in the first place, instead of spending money to clean up after them.

“The way I figure it, we have one more cleanup, and then bring the best security firm we can in there to keep the people out for good,” Hano said. “We redirect our resources in a proactive way.”

Hano said she is also concerned for the health of the workers who clean the property. “I mean, how much fecal matter can you clean up without coming down with something?”