Carlsbad Faces Up to Its Migrant Problem

In Carlsbad, the political tumult over migrant workers in Encinitas used to seem far away, but suddenly Carlsbad’s own migrant problem has burst into the open with some surprising results.

Within just weeks, community groups have formed and successfully lobbied the city council to support a hiring hall and shelter for migrants who sleep in primitive camps and cluster along rural El Camino Real in the mornings, awaiting work.

So far, Carlsbad council members have striven to ease the city’s migrant troubles with a low voice so the issue doesn’t come even close to the political distress in Encinitas, where the city council two weeks ago declared the city in a state of emergency.

“It’s not a crisis, but it’s a growing concern we must resolve,” said Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis, who is alarmed that his city has become a settling area for migrants who are trapped in North County by the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 at San Onofre.

“I’m not willing to let Carlsbad become a dumping ground,” said Lewis, who roundly faults the federal government for failing to solve the international problems that affect his and other local communities.

It’s believed that anywhere from 500 to 3,000 migrants dwell out of sight of most of Carlsbad, which is generally known not for migrants, but for its quaint downtown village, long beaches and throngs of tourists.

Both the new citizen groups and the Carlsbad council have quickly become lightening rods for action. And some social activists who once blistered the council for supposedly treating the migrant issue like a mere pesky distraction are now praising the council’s openness.

“I’m a lot less cynical than I was a week ago,” said Monsignor J. Raymond Moore, who recalls the frustration of serving as chairman of a council-appointed immigration task in 1987.

“I knew I was wasting my time,” he said. “After the recommendations were made, nothing was done. They turned it over to an assistant city manager and that was the end of that.”

Beside the alarming example of Encinitas, the citizen’s groups have been jarred by another event, the alleged handcuffing and beating of a migrant at the Country Store in January. Two store employees are awaiting trial on felony charges later this month.

“The Country Store incident was the catalyst, it was the flash point,” said Kathleen Wellman, a lawyer who helped form Caring Citizens of Carlsbad. “The allegations were shocking enough that people got together again.”

This isn’t the first time the community was stirred by concern over the migrants.

Four years ago, some parents of Kelly Elementary School students were frightened that migrants reportedly were intimidating their children.

“There were rumors undocumented workers were shaking down the children and stealing their lunch money,” said Gloria Carranza, a Carlsbad resident who was named, along with Moore, to the task force studying the immigrant problem.

After issuing a report in 1987, the council asked the task force to follow up with recommendations, but some task force members were left with a slightly bitter taste.

They recommended, among other things, providing migrants with housing, classrooms for English instruction, and a Citizen Day to express the community’s spirit of welcome.

“I guess we felt they kind of accepted it but they weren’t going to do much with it,” said Carranza, echoing Moore’s sentiments.

The migrant issue drifted from Carlsbad’s political agenda. That was relatively easy to do in Carlsbad, where, unlike Encinitas, the migrants are mainly visible in the rural El Camino Real area.

“All this ugliness is back there in the countryside, kind of hidden,” said Moore.

It remained an issue mainly consigned to Carlsbad’s quiet outback until the Country Store incident and the political noise in Encinitas, where the reaction to the highly visible migrants “brought a lot of things out in the open,” said Carranza.

First, a group called the Committee for Humanistic Treatment of Migrant Workers was formed to propose a hiring hall, followed in March by the 50-member Caring Residents of Carlsbad.

The latter group, which has taken the more public lobbying role, is led by attorney Wellman, a 15-year Carlsbad resident who lived in Mexico and Chile, and Ramon Campbell, a financial consultant who arrived here from Arizona a year ago.

Campbell said he appeared before the council last November to sound the alarm about the poor conditions that migrants told him about when he stopped to talk with them.

“At that point they were real negative,” Campbell recalled. “You could just tell by their reaction they didn’t show any enthusiasm about doing anying about it.”

He added, “Carlsbad was completely silent about the whole issue, and until somebody said something about it, it was going to stay that way.”

Mayor Lewis rejects the claim that the council has balked on the migrant issue.

The council, which had in fact ordered its staff to begin exploring a possible hiring hall before the community groups took up that banner, has recently taken additional steps.

It has asked the county to consider allowing the hiring hall on county-owned property near El Camino Real and Palomar Airport Road. And a week ago, the council backed Caring Residents of Carlsbad’s move to seek nearly $400,000 in state and federal grants to establish a temporary emergency shelter to house 50 homeless migrant workers for up to two months.

“I’m surprised but gratified,” said Wellman, whose group also ultimately wants to house about 500 migrant workers.

Noting that citizens, including seniors, are now deeply involved, she said there is a shared blame for the city’s previous inactivity. “You can say the council never did anything before, but neither did we,” said Wellman.

But committee members aren’t the only ones who see the council shifting to more direct action on the migrant matter.

Gloria Valencia-Cothran, a Carlsbad resident who recently retired as an aide to county Supervisor John MacDonald, said “I do think this council is saying ‘we need to be pragmatic. They’re (migrants) here, they’re not going away, we have to face this.”’

Yet Wellman and Campbell do not have a blank check from the council.

Lewis said the council is only willing to go so far to resolve a problem rightfully tackled by bigger authorities. “I’m upset with Congress and the county. They’re pushing this onto the local entities. It’s a political crime,” said the mayor.

Carlsbad is hardly alone in wrestling with the migrant issue.

Beside Encinitas’s highly-publicized deliberations, there are these recent developments in other North County communities:

* Vista late last week was dislodging 150 migrants from makeshift dwellings in a canyon near the city’s industrial park area.

* Oceanside two weeks ago opened an innovative mobile home park for homeless families near Mission San Luis Rey. The city treats migrants as part of the homeless issue. Also, an Oceanside avocado grower is thinking of applying for a state grant to provide trailers to house 21 workers.

Wellman believes the completion of the mini mobile home part encouraged Carlsbad’s commitment to ease the migrant problem. “Oceanside is the key,” she said. “Traditionally, there’s been the rivalry between Oceanside and Carlsbad.”

Lewis disagrees his city has come belatedly to the rescue of migrants, pointing out he had been steadily visiting and monitoring Encinitas before the Country Store episode helped bring the migrant issue to prominence again in Carlsbad.

While Lewis said the city would gladly assist private organizations to help migrants, he drew a firm line on the council’s willingness to actually provide housing or land. And he has insisted that only migrants who are in this country legally be served.

“We have not committed ourselves economically at all,” he said. He said he’ll ask the full council to consider placing a measure on the November ballot asking whether voters would support using city land or possible funding for migrant housing.

“You’re talking about a big time investment,” said Lewis. “I don’t think the council will commit the city til the people vote on it.”

There’s another reason Lewis is calling for a citywide vote on migrant housing. He hopes a ballot measure will take the issue directly to voters and avoid it becoming a political dispute as three council seats, including his, are up for election in November.

“I don’t want this to be a political issue” during the council campaign, he said.

Still, there is some common ground between the council’s cautious actions and the fervor of Caring Residents of Carlsbad. Both accept that the problem is real.

Wellman vowed her group will persist, and said, “We’ve got to get migrants out of the dirt and those spider holes.”

And Lewis said of the problem, “it’s not going to go away, it’s going to get worse.”