8 Day Laborers Arrested in Moorpark : Immigration: The INS raid comes after the City Council rejected a sanctioned site. Merchants say workers hurt business.

U.S. immigration officials arrested eight men in Moorpark Wednesday during an early morning raid of a popular pickup site for day laborers.

The 7 a.m. raid at the corner of High Street and Spring Road was applauded by local merchants, who said the job-seekers scare away potential customers and give downtown Moorpark a bad reputation.

But a spokesman for the day laborers said the raid only showed that most of the 40 or so workers who use the site are legal residents--and part of a larger problem that the Immigration and Naturalization Service won’t eliminate.

“Maybe the people who called the INS will now realize that the day laborers are not illegal residents. They are Moorpark residents looking for work in Moorpark street corners, and the solution has to come from within the city,” said Greg Simons, a Latino activist who helped found the Moorpark Day Laborers Assn.

An INS official said a follow-up sweep targeting day laborers’ employers would soon follow.

“This is a two-pronged operation,” said John Brechtel, assistant director for investigation at the INS in Los Angeles.

“Part 2 will be aimed at employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.”

The INS action followed the Moorpark City Council’s Jan. 8 decision against creating an officially sanctioned pickup site for the city’s day laborers. The City Council shelved the proposal after dozens of merchants and residents showed up at the meeting to oppose it.

An INS spokesman described those arrested as eight Mexican men, but declined to identify them. The workers were taken to the Federal Building in Los Angeles for deportation hearings or voluntary deportation, Brechtel said.

Simons said some of the workers arrested are legal residents who were not carrying their documents and that he expected that they would be released.

Brechtel, who supervised the raid, said agents were responding to numerous complaints from local merchants and residents.

The laborers, almost all of them Latinos, have been congregating on Moorpark’s downtown street corners for years, occupying the parking lot of a grocery store from dawn until about 10:30 a.m.

Every morning, a few are picked up by contractors in search of cheap labor or by homeowners who need help with yardwork or other odd jobs.

The merchants who occupy the quaint country-style shopping strip across the street from the pickup site have long complained that the day laborers scare away customers.

Some of them said Tuesday that the INS raid was long overdue.

“I think it was the right thing to do,” said Robert Scott, owner of Scott Optical. “This situation across the street was hurting us.”

“Glad to hear the INS came,” said Leah Alletto, owner of Tender Loving Hair styling salon. “If I were a woman who is new to the area, I’d be scared to come here with all those men hanging around across the street.”

Kathy Amador, owner of the Moorpark Flower Emporium, said she was appalled at the thought of employers giving jobs to illegal immigrants when so many Americans are jobless during the recession.

“The everyday people who are out of work have other methods of getting jobs. They don’t just stand on street corners,” she said. “That’s not how it’s done in this country.

“With so many taxpayers out of jobs, we need to take care of our own before we take care of these people.”

Moorpark Mayor Paul W. Lawrason--who along with Councilman Bernardo M. Perez had advocated the creation of an alternative pickup site--said Wednesday’s raid will make the proposal more difficult to implement, if not impossible.

“I’m beginning to believe that coming up with a solution that is agreeable to everybody will be next to impossible,” he said.

Lawrason said he was surprised at the number of undocumented workers arrested in the raid.

“That’s disappointing because I’ve constantly been told and advised by the day laborers that there were no undocumented men among the group,” he said. “There is no way in the world I believe we should support illegal immigrants in their quest for employment in the city.”

Perez, the only Latino on the City Council, said the raid saddened him.

“I’ve been dreading this possibility,” he said. “From a humanistic standpoint, it’s tough to see men taken away in shackles. I don’t know that we do this to drug dealers.”

Simons, who has lobbied the City Council to find a new site for the day laborers, said the INS raid was useless.

“It doesn’t work,” he said. “The day laborers will be back tomorrow.”