88 of Arrested Strikers Face Deportation

More than half of the 149 drywall workers arrested Thursday in a bitter labor dispute are illegal immigrants and will be deported after pending criminal charges against them are settled, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said Friday.

Emotions ran high throughout the day as dozens of wives and other family members gathered at the Orange County Jail to show their support for the incarcerated workers, 88 of whom are believed to be illegal immigrants. They were identified as part of routine checks conducted at the jail by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said Lt. Richard Olson, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Later in the day, hundreds of raucous supporters rallied at a union hall in Orange and organized a legal defense strategy for their co-workers. At both the jail and the union hall, the supporters pledged to continue the labor battle on behalf of the arrested workers.

“The wives are definitely not going to sit down,” said Lorena Munoz, 19, of Fullerton as she stood outside the jail. “We are going to picket and stop construction.” Munoz said 15 of her relatives, including cousins and uncles, had been jailed.

The drywall workers were rounded up Thursday morning in an unusual mass arrest by sheriff’s deputies after the workers allegedly stormed a Mission Viejo construction site, stole equipment and kidnaped six workers.

It was the first major confrontation stemming from a 5-week-old walkout by drywall workers demanding higher wages and formal recognition as a labor union. In another protest Friday, 18 workers were arrested at a San Diego site.

All 149 men arrested Thursday were charged with misdemeanor trespass and felony conspiracy to commit kidnaping and held on $50,000 bail each.

Some of the wives, who kept watch outside the jail for about five hours, complained about what they considered excessive bail and charged that some of the men scheduled for deportation are legal residents. They also said that family members had been given conflicting information about where the workers were jailed and that some were arrested unjustly.

“My husband was just sitting on a truck when he was arrested, and now they want $50,000,” said Maria Segura, 34, of Fullerton. She said that when she and her four children visited her husband, Pedro, 36, “he was crying when he saw me and his kids.”

None of the construction workers had posted the $50,000 bail as of Friday evening, the Sheriff’s Department said. Olson said that the bail set in the cases is standard for the charges filed.

Part of the confusion over where the inmates were held, he said, stemmed from the fact that the Santa Ana facility is overcrowded. In order to keep all of the arrested strikers together and make room for them, officials decided to transfer them to the Theo Lacy facility in Orange late Friday afternoon.

The mass arrest created problems for the Sheriff’s Department, Olson said, because extra beds had to be set up at the Santa Ana facility and additional officers deployed to handle the disturbance.

“This incident caused a major interruption in the deployment of patrol deputies and plainclothes investigators at several locations,” Olson said, adding that the service levels throughout the county were maintained. Two of those arrested are minors and were transferred to the juvenile detention facility in Orange, Olson said. About two-thirds of the workers were from Fullerton, Santa Ana and Anaheim, with the remainder from throughout Southern California.

Because of the large number of arrests, Olson said it would be difficult to track the status of each case until the workers are arraigned on the trespass and kidnaping charges on Tuesday--a delay caused by the long Fourth of July weekend.

One of the group’s organizers, Tony Hernandez, 37, of San Diego, denied that wildcat strikers had kidnaped the six workers from the job site at the Brighton Homes project near Oso Viejo and La Paz Road.

“We invited them (to leave the job) and they agreed to follow us,” Hernandez said. “But when their bosses showed up with the sheriff (deputies) they said, ‘Oh, they were (kidnaping) us.’ ”

In a show of unity, he said, all of the striking workers agreed to be arrested.

Lt. Larry Abbott, the department’s industrial relations representative, who was at the scene of the protest, said that the workers appeared to use “intimidation and physical force” against the six workers, which fits the legal definition of kidnaping.

Olson said that a special unit led by Abbott had met with organizers “to make sure they understand the legal limits of the law.” During the last couple of weeks, Olson said, the unit closely followed the union organizers in an attempt to prevent any major disturbances.

Abbott and representatives of the San Diego and San Bernardino sheriff’s departments met with some of the organizers in a three-hour, closed-door meeting at the union hall Friday night. Afterward, he said that organizers complained that they had been treated differently by each department for similar protests, and the police agencies agreed to name a liaison to handle the workers’ concerns.

“They’ve agreed to call us before doing anything,” Abbott said, but he added that after a conversation detailing legal issues surrounding protests, “they didn’t agree to obey the law.”

At the union hall rally that included Msgr. Jaime Soto, the Hispanic Vicar of the Diocese of Orange, workers said they would not be intimidated by the arrests.

“We can still see the enthusiasm,” said one of the organizers who would only identify himself as Roy. “It’s moving ahead.”

Hernandez added that the wives were ready to step in for their jailed spouses.

“Starting Monday, they want to picket at job sites,” he said.

Because the would-be union has scarce resources, organizers said they had spoken to a couple of attorneys but arrangements were unclear.

Drywall workers, who install plasterboard on the frames of new homes, have been going onto job sites to enlist support for their strike and demands for higher wages. Hernandez said that the $18-per-hour wage he received in 1979 has been slashed by two-thirds.

Building industry officials have refused to consider the demands for a union. Drywall companies say the result has been occasional vandalism at half-finished homes.