Facility With Ties to INS Targeted : Immigration: L.A. officials want to close detention center for those seeking asylum. They say it violates zoning permits.

Los Angeles city officials are seeking to shut down a privately run U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center in the Pico-Union District that has been the focus of repeated demonstrations in recent months by radical groups.

Last week, two officials from a firm that runs the detention center were arraigned in Los Angeles Municipal Court on charges that their company, Transitional Housing Inc., has violated building and zoning ordinances by operating the facility without a permit in a commercial zone.

Claiming that the building is approved to operate only as a hotel for the aged, the city attorney’s office filed a misdemeanor criminal complaint last May to close the green, two-story “Alvarado Processing and Residential Center,” used by the INS to detain applicants for political asylum.

Transitional Housing Inc. owner Karl Harz and company president Richard Edwards deny the charges, claiming that they are operating a legally permitted board-and-care facility. They said they have made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of improvements, transforming a crime-ridden building into a safe and useful public facility.

“I should be getting a plaque from Mayor Bradley rather than getting hassled,” said Harz, a Redondo Beach businessman.

Harz and other company officials claim that their prosecution by the city is politically motivated by Councilwoman Gloria Molina, who asked building officials to investigate the facility after it opened.

But officials with the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety point to the facility’s barred windows, motion detectors, security guards and wire mesh--which encloses inside balconies and keeps second-floor residents from climbing onto the roof--as evidence that the owners are violating their certificate of occupancy.

“That’s certainly out of the ordinary for a hotel for the aged,” said Timothy O’Conner, a city building inspector. “They’re using the structure in an unapproved manner.”

Alma Martinez, a spokeswoman for Molina, said the INS and Transitional Housing should have gone through public hearings to obtain a conditional-use permit or variance before opening the facility.

“There would have been plenty of normal proceedings in which to discuss this,” Martinez said. “What we’re trying to do is clean up the area and bring in productive, viable industry, not another incarceration facility.”

A similar battle was fought in 1986, when a converted Hollywood motel being used as an INS detention center came under fire from the community and was cited by the city for building and zoning violations. The center’s operator shut down the facility later that year.

INS officials declined to enter the fray.

“Our position is we have a contractual agreement with this firm,” said INS spokeswoman Virginia Kice. “As long as they’re providing services, we won’t get involved. If the city takes some action that prevents them from providing services, then we’ll have to take action.”

The Alvarado Street center has been the scene of violent clashes in recent months between police and leftist immigrant-rights advocates who claim that the facility is a “concentration camp.” Dozens of protesters have been arrested.

Pico-Union residents say that while they are tired of the repeated protests at the detention center, they reject arguments by Transitional Housing officials that the facility improves conditions in the area.

“This is a scandal,” said Raul Diaz, leader of a local homeowners group. “People cannot live like this.”

Transitional Housing won the $2-million detention facility contract last fall after the INS stopped using another privately run center in Inglewood. Transitional Housing’s contract expires in September, by which time the INS hopes to have completed construction of its own detention center at the agency’s former regional headquarters in San Pedro. The agency’s only other detention facilities in Southern California are in El Centro and San Diego.

The Alvarado Street detention center was troubled from the start. The facility went without a director experienced in detention facilities until this week, when Transitional Housing hired retired INS employee George Rayner to fill that job. And another firm run by Harz--which owned the building being used for the center--recently filed for bankruptcy. That firm, Alternative Funding Sources Ltd., could no longer meet $30,000 monthly interest payments on the property, Harz said.

Harz said the current legal owner of the building is one of his creditors.

The facility holds about 220 immigrant men, women and children at a time, some of them for several weeks or months. Most of those detained are applicants for political asylum, who must stay in the center until their cases are adjudicated or until they can raise the $500 to $2,000 needed to meet bond.

Refugees from Afghanistan constitute the largest nationality group at the center. There are several Pakistanis, Salvadorans, Sri Lankans and Mexicans there as well. The refugees sleep in bunk beds, four to six per room. Each room is equipped with a small television and bathroom.

The detainees are free to roam the center and use its Ping-Pong tables or a small recreation area, but unarmed Pinkerton security guards watch the building’s exits. Although INS rules forbid them from leaving the center, a few have left anyway, Edwards said. In those cases, the guards, who are not armed and are instructed to avoid using force, notify the INS of the escapes.