Legal Migrant Campsites Considered by Encinitas

In a sharp departure from city policy toward homeless migrant workers, the Encinitas City Council voted, 3 to 2, Wednesday to look into the possibility of establishing a legal campsite in or near the city for homeless migrants.

The camp would be managed by a yet-to-be-named nonprofit migrant advocacy organization. The camp would be equipped with trash bins and portable toilets.

Migrants have established at least 11 camps on private and public property in Encinitas, including that of a church, a supermarket and a schoolyard. Efforts to clear the areas have been futile because the camps often reappear as soon as a day after being closed.

The 11 known camps hold as many as 1,500 homeless migrants, according to a staff report.

“The people which are here out of desperation are not going to stop coming,” Mayor Pamela Slater said at Wednesday’s special City Council meeting. “What we need to do is find some acceptable alternative that will be workable.”

“The alternative to that might be for them to go back to their homes, where they came from and not continue living on other people’s property,” Councilwoman Marjorie Gaines said.

Landowners have complained that the squatters defecate on the land, leave trash and burn campfires that endanger other nearby structures.

“The situation is out of control,” Gaines said before the meeting.

The proposal, one that has been talked about for the last year, would establish health, safety and standard-of-living regulations for a legal campsite. The site would still be subject to raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

About 75 homeowners showed up to oppose the proposal.

After the vote, one woman muttered, “It better not be near my house.”

“Whether we like it or not, we haven’t got the enforcement capabilities to remove (the migrants) from the community,” said Fire Chief Robert LaMarsh, who manages the city’s transients issues program. “They are here, they are impacting us, and there are no alternatives for them. I am saying that this is a realistic solution.”

“What we’re doing right now doesn’t work, so let’s consider doing something different,” said LaMarsh before the meeting.

Some council members feared that establishing a migrant campsite would be illegal. And Gaines said that “lawlessness” at the illegal camps might be repeated at an established camp.

“We have a subculture that, in terms of our law, is lawless. There is no way that our city could legalize an encampment like that and have any assurance that there would be law. It’s simply not possible.”

Now, the city periodically clears migrants from the camps and gives property owners the responsibility to clean any remaining debris. Property owners spent about $150,000 last year cleaning the camps, while the city spent another $75,000.