Immigration Sign Is Down, but Rallies Keep Issue Alive

More than 70 law enforcement officers blanketed Blythe on Saturday as an Orange County-based group that had leased a billboard declaring California “The Illegal Immigration State” rallied near a gathering of Latino activists.

The peacekeeping effort worked. While members of the group gathered to complain about the billboard being removed, about 10 members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) marched without incident nearby. Another group of Latino activists held a peaceful gathering at a city park.

Barbara Coe, president of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, told about 100 supporters at a rally here that she will not be intimidated by Latino activists such as Mario Obledo, former state health, education and welfare secretary. He had vowed to burn or deface the billboard the coalition had leased in Blythe, which is on the Arizona border. The sign read: “Welcome to California, The Illegal Immigration State.”

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The billboard owner, Martin Media, took down the sign and refunded the group’s money after Obledo and other Latino activists threatened to remove it themselves. The company received letters, faxes and telephone calls from people around the country, some condemning the sign and some the decision to take it down, a spokeswoman said.

Members of the coalition carried handmade signs during their rally that said: “What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?” They later marched along a freeway overpass and unfurled a banner.

The only potential for trouble occurred when coalition members were boarding their bus and local Latino field workers challenged them, shouting, “Who will pick the lettuce?”

Coe said she was pleased with the turnout, saying it sent a message to Obledo and other Latino activists that the fight is not over.

“This victory is short lived, Mr. Obledo,” Coe said. “Not only will this billboard be re-erected in California, but in other states as well. The coalition represents groups throughout the United States.”

Coe also urged “patriotic Americans” to wake up and fight to protect the nation’s borders: “We will no longer be victims of illegal-alien law breakers who take our jobs, millions of our tax dollars for benefits, which are denied to citizens and even war veterans, and in return, many times their contributions are disease and drugs to our people.”

Marcos Contreras, a LULAC official, said he drove nine hours from Stockton to make a personal statement “against a racist sign.”

“LULAC also wanted to thank the local Latino community for helping put pressure on the advertising company that removed the sign,” Contreras said.

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Obledo, who helped found the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, praised the decision to remove the sign, but at a news conference on Friday, he vowed to watch for any other billboards that may be insensitive to immigrants and minorities.

Oddly, the billboard is not that big an issue inside the small farming community of Blythe, according to Mayor Robert Crain.

“People in town say, ‘OK, it’s there.’ But the sign is three or four miles outside of town,” Crain said. “For the most part, there’s been some comment on it, but it has not been as divisive as outside the community.”

With a population of 18,000, Blythe is split nearly equally with whites and Latinos, Crain said. “We’re a small isolated community, and people have to work together and get along,” he said. “And Blythe has done that for many years.”