Once-Notorious Flower Ranch Hires Haitians, Softens Its Look : Somis: Neighbors say secrecy is gone at Edwin Ives’ compound, along with Mexican workers he was accused of enslaving.

There is a new and softer look these days at the Somis compound of Edwin M. Ives, a flower rancher who gained international notoriety in 1990 when he was charged with enslaving farm workers.

The large metal gates that blocked out the world 2 1/2 years ago have been covered by blue and green pastel fencing and white latticework, and are casually swung open so passersby can see inside.

The Indian workers from rural Mexico who said they were kept as virtual slaves have been replaced by another group of impoverished immigrants--Haitians who say they are treated well.

And as Ives--who has agreed in a plea bargain to pay $1.5 million to 300 ex-workers--prepares for sentencing on seven labor and immigration counts, some Somis neighbors say the ranch is not the same secretive encampment it used to be.

“It’s different,” said Aurora Quinones, owner of the Somis Market, where Ives’ workers shop for food and drinks at the end of the day.

“Now the doors are open and everybody can come out. The guys who come in say everything is OK now,” Quinones said last week. “Now everybody is clean and everybody has a uniform.”

They cash checks for $180 to $200 each week, the merchant said, evidence that Ives is paying at least the minimum wage to his workers.

Three Haitian workers, placed at the ranch this summer by a Catholic Charities refugee program, said they receive the $4.25 hourly minimum wage and work eight-hour days--half the time that workers once said they toiled at the ranch for $1 an hour.

The Haitian workers, interviewed as they walked to Quinones’ market, said the Ives ranch is generally a good place to work.

“Yes, more or less,” said Sauveur Etienne, a 19-year-old former concrete worker. Onetime sugar-cane cutter Idovie Dacolena, 26, who wore a crisp, clean uniform, said his only problem is not enough work.

Even that is scheduled to change this weekend, as a temporary work slowdown for structure painting and repair is completed and 16 Haitians again join the Ives payroll, supervisors of the refugee program said.

In fact, Ives’ ranch has become a principal port in the storm for Haitians being scattered around the nation as part of an international resettlement plan, said Jerry Gaspard, a Catholic Charities manager in Los Angeles.

About 200 Haitians have been moved to the Los Angeles area this year, and of the 30 to 35 who have found work, nearly half have worked for Ives, Gaspard said.

“I think the gentleman has a good heart,” Gaspard said of Ives. “I’ve been in his environment and he has a good word, a kind word for refugees. Haitians are hard workers and I think he wants to help.”

Gaspard said he toured Ives’ Somis ranch a month and a half ago and found that worker benefits included free living quarters, “a soccer field with goals, a TV room with cable TV, everything.”

Haitian workers are anxious to come to Ives’ ranch, Gaspard said.

County investigators say that Ives has continued to improve conditions at his compound, where a major fire erupted in 1987 and resulted in Ives pleading guilty to seven misdemeanor crimes involving building, safety and zoning violations.

And federal immigration officials say they have no evidence that Ives has employed illegal workers since his arrest in April, 1990.

Ives, 55, of Los Angeles pleaded guilty in May to maintaining false records, harboring and transporting illegal immigrants and paying sub-minimum wages. He agreed to pay $1.5 million in back wages, the stiffest fine ever in a U.S. immigration case.

His farming company also admitted to nine crimes including racketeering, the first organized-crime conviction in a federal civil rights case, prosecutors say.

Just when Ives, who faces up to 16 years in prison but could get only probation, will be sentenced is another matter.

Sentencing was delayed in early August because Ives, whose net worth was estimated at $5 million in 1990, could not sell any of his three ranches. A sentencing hearing scheduled to begin tomorrow was delayed last week, and Ives now wants a postponement until December to give him more time to sell his property.

His attorneys say the sale of Ives’ 10-acre Upland citrus grove is in the works with the California Department of Transportation because it is in the path of a new freeway. And a Caltrans spokeswoman said the deal should close within 60 days.

The sale price is still being determined, but Ives’ attorneys say that Caltrans offered $700,000 in 1984 and that this sale will provide enough money to ensure payment of the promised $1.5 million before sentencing.

“This is not a great time to be trying to liquidate property,” lawyer John Crouchley said. “Mr. Ives has no interest in stringing this along. We’re anxious to move on this and to get it resolved.”

In addition to the Upland ranch, Ives is asking $7 million for the 50-acre Somis ranch and a nearby 92-acre eucalyptus field in Moorpark, real estate sources said. But the properties--purchased for $600,000 and $900,000 more than a decade ago--have been on the market for at least four years.

“I know he would sell it for a decent offer,” Crouchley said.

Neither federal prosecutors nor Ives’ lawyers want their plea bargain to fall away, they said.

“What money he has we want to go to workers, not to lawyers’ fees,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol L. Gillam said. “His whole hope is that if he pays the money before sentencing, he’ll get a lighter sentence.”

Sentencing by U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall will follow a hearing in which both sides say they may call numerous ex-workers to testify about conditions at the ranch during the 1980s.

Gillam said she plans to call at least a dozen witnesses. Ives’ attorney, Stephen Sadowsky, said six Ives employees--illegal immigrants granted legal resident status until the case is resolved--might also testify for the defense.

Though they dropped the slavery charges that brought the case worldwide publicity, prosecutors say they still believe that Ives enslaved workers. They dropped the rare peonage charges because of the large guaranteed payoff to ex-workers and because the Ives company set a precedent in a civil rights case by pleading guilty to organized crime.

Gillam insists that Ives helped smuggle unsophisticated Indian laborers from the mountaintops of rural Mexico to his labor camp between 1984 and 1990, then refused to let them leave until smuggling fees were paid.

The government still maintains that he forced them to work for $1 an hour and sold them food and sundries at inflated prices from a company store.

Sadowsky said the rancher is the victim in the case and that his guilty plea was extorted by the government’s over-filing of charges and its charges against Ives’ wife, Dolly, which prosecutors dropped as part of the deal.

The prosecution’s basic slavery premise is “hogwash,” Sadowsky said, and its case is based on the testimony of witnesses hoping for money from Ives.

Sadowsky said the Ives ranch was similar to many other labor camps in California. “I believe 98% of this case is pure myth and fiction.” And he said that today’s changes at the Somis ranch are not nearly as striking as its exterior appearance would suggest.

“It was a labor camp,” he said. “Was it paradise? Of course not. But it’s not as described in the indictment, not even close.”

The lawyer said he has at least 40 declarations from current or former Ives employees that he could submit about conditions at the ranch in the 1980s.

He said he thought that representatives of Catholic Charities’ refugee resettlement program would also make good witnesses for Ives.

The agency’s Gaspard, who is himself Haitian, said that he began placing workers at Ives’ ranch about 1981 and continued at least until 1984.

Gaspard said he inspected the camp several times over that period and found no problems. He said no Haitian worker ever complained about the conditions there.

“He was the only one hiring Haitians because they could not speak too good,” Gaspard said. “Many of them were up there for a long time.”

After Haitians from the early 1980s’ immigrant stream worked their way up to better jobs, Catholic Charities stopped the placements with Ives. But last winter Ives called to see if he could again hire Haitian refugees, Gaspard said.

By March about 10 were employed at the ranch, and several have worked there ever since.

“It has been a very good relationship between the Haitians and Mr. Ives,” Gaspard said.