Trial Starts in Alien Detention Case : Court: Two Carlsbad store employees are charged with unlawful imprisonment in an incident involving the handcuffing of a migrant laborer outside the store.

On the day they handcuffed a farm worker to a railing behind a Carlsbad store, two store employees were making a legitimate citizen’s arrest, defense attorneys said Tuesday.

The argument was made during opening statements of the trial for Randy Ryberg and William Zimmerman in Vista Superior Court. The two are charged with a misdemeanor count of unlawful imprisonment in the Jan. 3 incident at the rural Country Country.

Lynn A. Behymer told the jury that one of the jobs of his client, Ryberg, was to drive off the scores of migrant workers who sometimes blocked the entrance to the store as they sought day labor along El Camino Real, a few miles south of California 78.

Unlike his brother Rick Ryberg, the owner of the store, Randy Ryberg had never before made a citizen’s arrest but he decided to give it a try after Candido Gayosso Salas, 27, ignored several warnings to leave the property, Behymer told jurors.

Zimmerman, an independent meat cutter working at the market, assisted in making the citizen’s arrest, and he and Ryberg handcuffed Gayosso to the rail for more than two hours, according to his attorney, Robert L. James.

Authorities allege that the pair attacked the undocumented worker in an attempt to send a message to the great numbers of workers who gather in front of the store each morning.

Gayosso, a slight man wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, testified that he was grabbed about 7:45 a.m. by Ryberg, who stands about 6-foot-6, and dragged to the back of the store, where he was handcuffed to the rail.

Before being released, he told the court, his hands and legs were bound with silver duct tape and a bag was placed over his head with a phrase reading “No Mas Aqui,” an ungrammatical Spanish warning to stay away.

Deputy Dist. Atty. George McFetridge said Tuesday that the attack on Gayosso was anything but a lawful citizen’s arrest. “This was never a proper citizen’s arrest,” he said.

“There’s no excuse, in any event, for bagging a person like that, no matter what point they were trying to make.”

The Country Store case illustrates the tensions that have grown throughout North County, where perhaps thousands of documented and undocumented day laborers from Mexico and Central America live in makeshift encampments, often within sight of new housing developments.

At least one community has recently passed an anti-hiring ordinance to stem the impromptu practice of hiring workers from city street corners.

On Tuesday, store worker Katey Dann testified that she saw Gayosso inside the store earlier that morning and said she heard Randy Ryberg yell several times for Gayosso and others to leave the market parking lot, where they were apparently blocking traffic.

“He wouldn’t leave the premises,” she said. “If he did, he’d leave for a few minutes and come back after Randy left.”

Gayosso testified that he was not inside the store that morning and that he did not hear Ryberg say anything before being grabbed. While he was being dragged to the back of the store, Gayosso testified that Zimmerman held him face down as Ryberg chased off two other migrants who had come to his aid.