INS Cracks Down on Builders, Restaurants

Marshaling its expanding force of agents in Orange County, immigration authorities arrested 43 undocumented workers at a dozen construction sites and 36 more at four McDonald’s eateries, officials said Thursday.

The arrests are part of a heightened effort by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Orange County to crack down on the building industry and to increase its surveillance into less customary areas, like restaurants.

Thursday’s sweep picked up undocumented workers at four McDonald’s outlets in Irvine, Laguna Niguel and Newport Beach. The fast-food stores are operated by McDonald’s franchisee Joseph C. Nebeel Jr., 49, of Tustin.

In another sweep that lasted most of Tuesday, agents from the INS and the Contractors State License Board pulled workers from residential and commercial building sites in Yorba Linda, and is continuing to investigate the 12 contractors and subcontractors who employed the workers.

“Our priority is to investigate those employers who we think are in industries with the most egregious problems,” said John Brechtel, acting head of the INS office in Santa Ana.

The federal agency’s enforcement division in Santa Ana had been hindered in past years by a small staff. But in the last 18 months, it has tripled its local force to more than 50 agents and aides, Brechtel said.

The effort, he said, is to create a full-service operation in Orange County and to tackle bigger cases.

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Thursday’s sweep stunned patrons at McDonald’s as INS agents rushed in at the four sites in a coordinated action at 11:30 a.m. and handcuffed 36 Nebeel workers.

“I thought the whole scene was outlandish,” said Tom Manning, a bank employee who witnessed the raid in Irvine. “A McDonald’s in the middle of Irvine with about 15 to 20 people handcuffed. I couldn’t believe it. The place was empty [of employees]. I mean there were about 200 hamburgers sitting on their counters waiting to be sold.”

Nebeel was unavailable for comment Thursday.

Brechtel said that an audit showed in recent months that 89 of 129 employees possessed invalid Social Security numbers or work papers.

All the employees identified themselves as Mexican nationals, Brechtel said. About 10 requested formal immigration hearings, while the rest opted for voluntary return to their country, he said.

In the sweep of the construction sites, 41 workers voluntarily returned to Mexico and two requested deportation hearings. The two are being detained in INS facilities across from the federal prison on Terminal Island in Long Beach.

“We’re seeing a higher and higher percentage of illegal aliens working in the construction industry,” Brechtel said. “We are going to continue to look at construction sites in Orange County.”

He wouldn’t identify the employers--contractors and subcontractors who typically were picking workers up at day labor sites. But he said 10 were based in Orange County and one each were in Riverside and Los Angeles counties.

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It was the first raid this year of Orange County construction sites. He said INS agents conducted sweeps of construction sites in the county twice last year. Such sweeps are more routine in Los Angeles County, he said, where INS agents have followed in the path of the state licensing board that mobilized after the Northridge earthquake.

“I’m glad to see something is being done,” said Bob Balgenorth, president of the state Building Trades Council. “There are a lot of employers who refuse to use undocumented workers. But a few try to gain a competitive advantage over other builders by paying substandard wages and exploiting these workers.”

Brechtel said many builders have been complaining that some contractors and subcontractors are stealing work with low bids, a product of paying low wages with no benefits to immigrants illegally in the country.

Employers who fail to check citizenship and work papers can be fined up to $1,000 per undocumented worker, and those who knowingly hire them can face, in the worst cases, criminal misdemeanor charges that carry a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $3,000 fine per worker.