Los Angeles police arrest
work-soliciting immigrants
Complaints against groups
in suburbs lead cities to
grapple with laborers
BY BEN FOX
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. — Look
ing back, Braulio Gonzalez says, the
man who drove up and offered him
$10 an hour to break up a concrete
driveway did seem suspicious. The
man’s truck didn’t have license plates
and he wouldn’t say where the job
was, telling the day laborer to follow
in his car.
Sure enough, a few minutes later,
police from this Los Angeles suburb
arrested Gonzalez and three other
laborers as they turned into a dead
end street.
“I’ve been working on that corner
for years,” says the 48-year-old
Guatemala native. “Nothing like this
has ever happened.”
Gonzalez was caught up in an un
usual — and critics say unconstitution
al — sting that underscores the vastly
different responses U.S. cities have of
fered to the growing number of men,
often Hispanic immigrants, who wait
on street comers for a day’s work.
Cities such as Thousand Oaks, an
other Los Angeles suburb, and
Hoover, Ala., set aside space for work
ers to gather and even to take English
classes. Other communities, from
Prince William County, Va., to Redon
do Beach, have decided the best way
to handle public complaints about the
pick-up spots is to move the men
along with citations and arrests.
Conflicts are happening more often
as temporary laborers become a per
manent fixture of the U.S. labor mar
ket, particularly in construction,
landscaping and do-it-yourself home
improvement, according to re
searchers who study the issue.
“The notion of looking for work
in this manner annoys a lot of peo
ple,” said Abel Valenzuela, a Uni
versity of California Los Angeles so
ciologist who has surveyed day
laborers around the country. “Most
cities react negatively.”
In Redondo Beach, police said they
acted after getting numerous com
plaints about laborers at the city’s two
corner gathering spots being drunk,
urinating in public, loitering, trespass
ing, blocking traffic and harassing cus
tomers entering businesses.
About 60 day laborers were arrest
ed in a series of stings last month.
They were charged with violating an
until-now rarely enforced 1987 ordi
nance that prohibits soliciting em
ployment in a public place. The max
imum penalty is a $100 fine and three
years’ probation.
“We applaud their desire to work,
but our job is to maintain order,” said
City Councilman Gerard Bisignano.
Immigrant advocates have chal
lenged the arrests as a First Amend
ment violation. Laborers call the
crackdown harassment.
“We’re not criminals. We go where
we have to go to get work,” said Gon
zalez, a legal U.S. resident and former
r
Main destination for
international migrants
A century of migration
More people live outside their
country of origin today than
at any other time in history
and the surge in migration is
playing a significant role in
the changing demographics
of many countries.
In 2000, 175 million people
were living outside their
country of birth
180 million people
160.
140 .
120 .
60
40
20
0
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
35 million
people
United States
35.0 million 30
migrants -
(12.3% of the
population)
Traditional country of immigration
SOURCE: United Nations
AP
Day laborer profile in Southern California
One in four day laborers worked as a laborer for over six years,
with about 5 percent doing so for more than 10 years. Most were
Hispanic, young and not married.
Marital status
Married —i
37.3%
Country of origin
United
States
Mexico
77.9%
Day laborer tenure in years
Less
than 1
2-5
Central
America
Other 11.1%
Age
20.1%
10%—14%
6-10
More
than 10
20.3%
38%
5.2%
28%
___p
18-27 28-37 38-47 48-57 58+
SOURCE: UCLA, Center for the Study of Urban Poverty, 1999 survey
AP
merchant seaman who supports a wife
and young son on trickle-in wages that
can be up to $110 on a good day and
nothing at all on a bad one.
The men were released on $100 bail
with a notice to appear in court. Police
did not contact federal immigration au
thorities to determine whether any of
the laborers were in this country ille
gally, as their counterparts did last
month in Virginia when they anested
about two dozen immigrants for loiter
ing outside a 7-Eleven.
Virginia Kice, a U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement spokes
woman, said the agency sees little
practical value in raiding gathering
spots because many day laborers are
legal residents.
In well-to-do Thousand Oaks,
on the opposite side of downtown
Los Angeles, officials fielded com
plaints about day laborers in one
neighborhood for 15 years before
they set aside space for workers in
a grassy area beneath a freeway.
The city installed portable toilets,
benches and bike racks for the
men, and also provides a meeting
room for English classes.
The city still gets scattered com
plaints about the laborers, said Assis
tant City Manager Scott Mitnick.
“You never really resolve the issue.
You just move it from one neighbor
hood to another,” Mitnick said. “The
downside is it’s a lot of people in one
area, and nobody wants that near
their home.”
The city of Redondo Beach said it
has considered giving workers their
own space but could not afford it.
Activists said Redondo Beach sim
ply chose to spend money on en
forcement and fighting a lawsuit filed
by the Mexican American Legal De
fense and Educational Fund, which
has prevailed in court against similar
laws in Los Angeles County.
In any case, the arrests may not be
much of a deterrent.
“We’re going back to the corner,”
said Angel Sanchez, a 50-year-old il
legal immigrant laborer from
Ecuador. “We need to eat. We need to
pay the rent.”
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Congo: More than 3 million
killed during five-year war
Continued from page 6
workers and from aid groups.
No clashes between Congolese
and Rwandan forces had been re
ported, he said.
A ranger at Virunga National Park
bordering Rwanda and Congo said
he saw about 400 armed Rwanda
troops cross into the park Sunday.
The troops were well-armed and
traveled in a sport utility vehicle and
on foot, the ranger said on condition
of anonymity, adding they appeared
to be heading north to remote vol
canic mountains north of Goma.
The area is believed to hold some
of the estimated 8,000-10,000 Rwan
dan Hutu rebels still in Congo.
In Goma, local chiefs also said their
people reported seeing Rwandan
troops in isolated hills since Friday.
In Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, Rwan
dan special envoy Richard Sezibera
said he would neither confirm nor
deny that Rwandan troops have en
tered Congo. Sezibera said the Rwan
dan government would “do whatev
er is necessary to protect Rwanda’s
borders and people. ”
The Rwandan envoy specified the
Rwandan Hutu rebels were “in the
area” of the reported Rwandan incur
sions, including Virunga National
Park and the small town of Rutshuru.
When asked directly about the
reports coming from eastern Congo,
he said, “I will not comment about
rumors, reported sightings, innuen
do, timelines or projections.”
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“To our knowledge, there’s
no Rwandan presence,” said
Jacqueline Chenard, a spokes
woman for the U.N. force in east
Congo. “It’s a rumor.”
The United Nations has 11,000
troops in Congo, overseeing peace
and power-sharing deals that
mandated the withdrawal of for
eign armies.
The force is building to 16,000 as
the United Nations steps up disar
mament efforts of Rwandan Hutu
rebels and other militias in the east.
Some other Western diplomats in
Congo’s capital said they had no
confirmation that Rwandan troops
had entered.
Kabila met Monday with ambas
sadors of U.N. Security Council na
tions and leading African nations,
Kasango confirmed. Kabila informed
them he would send troops to North
Kivu province. The province, with
Goma as its capital, encompasses the
areas of the alleged incursions.
Rwanda has invaded Congo
twice since 1996 on the grounds of
flushing out Rwandan Hutu rebels
responsible for the 1994 genocide of
a half-million minority Tlitsis and
moderate Hutus in the nation.
Rwanda’s second Congo inva
sion, in 1998, touched off a five
year war that drew in the armies of
four other nations and split re
source-rich Congo. An estimated
3.2 million people died in the
Rwanda-controlled east alone, most
through famine and disease.
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