AGOURA HILLS : 30 Laborers Ousted From 5 Campsites

Sheriff’s deputies this week ousted about 30 day laborers from campsites on private land in Agoura Hills, part of a continuing battle between local officials and the workers.

Deputies posted flyers Monday on the ramshackle shelters at five sites near the corner of Kanan and Agoura roads, warning the day laborers in English and Spanish that they were trespassing and that anything left on the properties would be thrown away, said Lt. Jim Pierson of the sheriff’s Lost Hills/Malibu Station.

On Wednesday, authorities started removing the shelters, with permission of the absentee property owners.

“There is an extreme fire hazard with these people here with their stoves,” Pierson said. “Some of them will try to relocate somewhere else in the hills, so we have to keep an eye on them.”

The shelters were used by laborers who could not find enough work to afford the bus trip back to Los Angeles, where Pierson said many of the workers live. The attempt to stop camping on the private land comes after city leaders set up a phone-in daily labor hot line, in an effort to keep workers from soliciting jobs from street corners.

The legal director for the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN), which filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of the workers, said destruction of the shelters is just another move in a series of efforts to keep Latinos from looking for work in the mostly affluent, semirural community.

“I don’t know what the sheriff’s motives are in this,” said CARECEN Legal Director E. J. Flynn. “But they have long been, in effect, the henchmen of the city leaders who want to throw Latino workers out of the city.”