INS Arrests 10 the Day After Call for Crackdown : Santa Clarita: The agency says its action is unrelated to the council’s rejection of a hiring hall plan and plea for help in dealing with day laborers.

Border Patrol agents arrested 10 laborers in Santa Clarita Thursday, a day after the City Council called for a crackdown on illegal immigrants that drew criticism from immigrant rights advocates.

Immigration officials said the arrests, seven on the street and three at a construction site, were unrelated to Wednesday’s council vote.

The council, responding to complaints from merchants about Latino laborers congregating near their stores and seeking work from passersby, rejected a proposal to establish a hiring center and called instead on the Immigration and Naturalization Service to arrest and deport immigrants in the country illegally.

About a dozen other laborers on the street in the downtown Newhall section of the city were not detained, either because they had residency documents and or because agents believed them to be legal immigrants, said Mike Molloy, supervising agent of the Border Patrol office in Camarillo.

“A lot of people at day labor sites these days are documented,” he said.

“A great portion are Salvadorans and Guatemalans who have protected status. At some of these day labor sites, it’s up to 50%.”

Agents were in the area serving notice of a fine on an employer and following up on complaints received during past weeks, Molloy said.

An INS sweep in the same area last week resulted in 45 arrests.

But city officials should not expect a significant new INS presence, Molloy said.

His office has only four agents to cover Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in addition to Santa Clarita, he said.

“I have at least seven communities in my area that have the same problem,” he said. “I’m not aware of any cities that have found a solution.”

The City Council vote against creating an official hiring center for the laborers was futile and disturbing, immigrant rights advocates said Thursday.

Elsewhere in Southern California, attempts to expel day laborers from the streets have failed because their cheap labor is integral to the economy, the advocates said.

“I think it’s discrimination,” said Soledad Alatorre of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional. “Day laborers are a service to this society. All of the foundations, all of the economists have determined that without their labor this country would go down. They need to create a system for hiring these workers.”

And the INS has no effect on the increasing number of day laborers who are legally in the United States, experts said.

“I think there’s a tendency to think that anyone on the street is undocumented because they are desperate enough to be out there,” said Gilda Rodriguez of San Fernando Neighborhood Legal Services. “It’s a mixed group.”

The council’s stance could increase hostility toward Latinos of working-class appearance, said Ann Kamsvaag, a lawyer with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

“It’s dangerous,” she said. “There have been situations in other cities with people driving by and threatening laborers.”

Several critics saw anti-Latino overtones in a statement by Santa Clarita City Councilwoman Jo Ann Darcy, who said Wednesday: “If you thin out the day laborers, you’ll thin your barrio out too.”

David Pallack, an attorney with San Fernando Neighborhood Legal Services, said: “It troubles me because it indicates that there is something bad about a Latino population.”

Darcy said in an interview that she did not mean to disparage Latinos.

She said she was talking about complaints by legal Latino residents who are intimidated and upset by overcrowded housing and other hazards they attribute to illegal residents.

The statement about “thinning out” the barrio referred to cracking down on such hazards, she said.

“All it addresses is the illegals,” she said. “We would bend over backwards to help the legal ones.”