Squatters Return in L.A. After Immigration Raid

One day after immigration authorities raided squatters’ camps and made street arrests near a well-known Westside day laborer pickup spot, scores of men again lined the stretch of Sawtelle Boulevard on Thursday morning waiting for prospective employers to drive by and offer them jobs.

Immigration and Naturalization Service officers raided the makeshift camps under two San Diego Freeway overpasses early Wednesday. Scores more were arrested on Sawtelle when they ran at the sight of the officers, who made nearly 120 arrests of suspected illegal aliens.

Although the raid frightened some workers as well as employers who frequent the popular labor pickup spot in the midst of one of the city’s most affluent neighborhood’s, those who returned Thursday criticized the raid as “senseless.”

“Why do they waste their time? By tomorrow, half the people they throw over the border will be back. The rest will be back within 10 days,” said Encarnacion Sandoval, 35.

“All they accomplished by coming in here and chasing people around was to frighten the women and children,” said Sandoval, who lives in the residential complex known as “Little Tijuana.”

Joseph Thomas, the INS deputy district director in Los Angeles, said the raid was conducted with the specific purpose of apprehending suspected aliens living under the freeway overpasses in response to growing complaints from neighbors. Thomas said area residents and merchants complained about the men urinating in public and harassing passers-by.

Thomas added that recently Culver City police arrested three men living under the freeway on suspicion of burglary.

“That’s what tipped the scales for us,” Thomas said, noting that the agency has been targeting criminal activity but does not ordinarily raid day laborer pickup spots.

“What I don’t like (about the raids) is that they don’t distinguish,” said Abraham Gonzalez, 23, who came to the United States from his native Jalisco about six years ago and lives with his wife and their small child at the complex. “If they want to deport the undocumented, why don’t they deport the undocumented who are bums and drug addicts, the ones who don’t want to work? Why pick on the ones who have jobs and families to support?