ACLU and groups representing day laborers file lawsuit against Costa Mesa

Dozens of day laborers, chanting slogans and carrying signs, marched through the streets of Costa Mesa on Tuesday, protesting against a city ordinance that, they say, unfairly prevents them from gathering in parking lots to look for work.

Such congregations, in which day laborers wait or wave at potential employers passing by in vehicles, have long been a tactic among immigrants in Southern California but seem to be growing larger these days due to the recent recession.

And as the day laborers concluded their hourlong march on the steps of Costa Mesa City Hall, a pair of civil rights groups, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the ACLU of Southern California, simultaneously filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, challenging Costa Mesa’s anti-solicitation ordinance as “unconstitutional.”

The litigation is the direct result of a Costa Mesa police sweep in which undercover officers, posing as undercover employers, rounded up 12 men in a white van at three locations in the city on Sept. 25, then cited them for violating the ordinance after promising them $8 an hour jobs, activists said Tuesday.

The men, all of them Latino, were ultimately deported to Mexico within two days of their arrest after they were discovered to have been illegally working and living in the United States, activists said. In many cases, the men left behind wives and children, activists said.

“This is clearly a violation of free speech -- prohibiting day laborers from seeking employment,” said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles. “It is a cherised right to to be able to look for work and exercise your right to free speech. It’s a right that has been fought for and passed down for generations.”

According to the city ordinance, “It shall be unlawful for any person to stand on a street and actively solicit employment, business or contributions from any person in a motor vehicle traveling along a street.”

Activists on Tuesday, however, pointed out that those who twirl signs and advertise local businesses should be subject to the same sort of violations, at least according to the spirit and language of the ordinance.

“As it’s written, then school children who hold car washes to raise money should be arrested and cited,” said Gladys Limon, staff attorney for MALDEF. “This ordinance places strict restrictions on people’s ability to express themselves and express their need for a job. The distinction between ‘permitted passive solicitation’ and ‘prohibited active solicitation’ is illusory.”

But Costa Mesa Police Chief Christopher Shawkey said the key difference is that the police are not getting complaints from school children who hold car washes or from those who twirl signs and advertise businesses.

Police, however, did receive more than 100 complaints levied at day laborers in certain pockets of the city, which led to the operation in five locations: 2200 Harbor Blvd., 2680 Newport Blvd., 2300 Harbor Blvd., 2150 Placentia Ave. and 799 W. 17th St.

Of the five locations, there were problems at three of the sites -- at 2680 Newport Blvd., 2150 Placentia Ave. and 799 W. 17th St., Shawkey said.

“As long as they’re in conformance with the city code,” Shawkey said, referring to the day laborers in respect to the anti-solicitation ordinance, “we have no problem with them. But they shouldn’t step into the roadway or be aggressive in their solicitation.”

Mayor Allan Mansoor said that some of the day laborers aren’t just aggressively looking for jobs -- they’re also “loitering in front of businesses, urinating in the streets, throwing trash and being loud and disrputive.”

He added: “I don’t think anybody would want that in their neighborhoods.”

But activists who have worked closely with the family members of the men who were deported said that the enforcement of the ordinance has led to the disintegration of many families in Costa Mesa.

“It’s breaking up families and leaving children without working fathers who’d been helping to pay the rent,” said Gabriela Trujillo, a school teacher who has seen the personal effects of deportations in the classroom over the years and who represents the Colectivo Tonantzin, a party in the lawsuit.

According to MALDEF, several cities that have had similar anti-solicitation ordinances have already repealed such ordinances in the face of litigation, including Lake Forest, Glendale, Upland and the County of Los Angeles.

They’re hoping that Costa Mesa follows suit.

One of the biggest problems in the city, activists said, is that the city no longer has one place where workers can congregate. The city used to have a day worker center, but that was closed down in 2005, and since then the day laborers have spread out over parts of the city in search of jobs.

“These are the hands that paint your houses and grow your gardens,” said Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. “Costa Mesa has distinguised itself by choosing to enforce this ordinance in the last few months. Most cities that have this ordinance don’t enforce it all. They realize that it’s wrong.”