Thread: Day labor site touted for county

Day labor site touted for county
Sheriff's Department is helping effort for south area job center.
By Susan Ferriss - sferriss@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, October 28, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1




Sheriff's Lt. Rosie Enriquez chats with day laborers at 47th Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. She believes a day labor center could help cut crime by getting job seekers off the streets.
Florence Low / flow@sacbee.com

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Lt. Rosie Enriquez sat in a parking lot in her unmarked cruiser, looking out at a small sea of about 50 men waiting for the promise of work to arrive.

Within minutes, a pickup loaded with six large fence posts turned into the gas station at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 47th Avenue. The men rushed the truck, and two with the sharpest elbows hopped in and drove off, past strip malls in south Sacramento.

Enriquez stepped from her own car, and the men crowded around her. "Buenos dÃ*as, muchachos. Hay mucho trabajo?" the uniformed Sacramento County Sheriff's Department lieutenant said. "Good morning, boys. Much work?"

The Latino day laborers, most of them undocumented immigrants, greeted her in unison like a chorus of schoolkids.

Enriquez believes the men are mostly harmless. But their presence, she said, intimidates and frustrates residents and merchants, who call the department to complain about littering, loitering, traffic hazards and general blight.

The low-income area already has a serious crime problem, Enriquez said, the worst of any division in the department. She and other ranking officers in the department's Central Division realized they needed a solution for what's both a nuisance and a magnet for crime.

The conclusion: The department pushed to get the immigrant workers off the street – and into a privately run day labor center where they can be dispatched in an orderly, safe fashion so deputies can devote more time to fight crime.

It's a decision that bucks a national current of hostility toward undocumented workers, Enriquez acknowledged. But it makes sense to deputies who would rather concentrate on preventing burglaries, drug trafficking, gang shootings and assaults, and armed robberies of the cash-carrying immigrant workers.

In the past year, of 71 felonies reported in one five-square-mile area where laborers tend to gather, all the victims were Latinos, a revealing detail, according to Enriquez.

"I usually see them as victims – victims of criminals and employers. It's like a double whammy," she said.

Enriquez began nearly two years ago to research how day labor centers function. She visited several of them. The most promising model, she said, is in the Bay Area city of Concord.

Enriquez serves at the center of a nonprofit coalition that's combining the privately run – and privately funded – day labor center with a more broad-based community center that will be built at 41st Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. In addition to offering workers a place to pair up with employers, the center will offer services ranging from parenting classes to English lessons.

Day labor centers have divided communities where some residents complain they encourage illegal immigration. About 65 exist nationally now. A handful have closed because of poor management, objections to them receiving public funding or simply because of protests that illegal immigrants were involved.

But some communities are still choosing to open them, and local law enforcement across the country almost always serves a key supportive role, according to Abel Valenzuela, a UCLA urban planner and day labor expert.

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department has gone further than many agencies by putting Enriquez, who is bilingual, in charge of instigating the creation of a center.

Merchants in the Central Division support the idea and are helping raise money for it. Objections have been loud but minimal, said Enriquez and Chief Deputy R.C. Smith, who initially assigned her to the project.

"We concluded that immigration status aside, the overwhelming majority of these workers were decent, law-abiding people who just want to put food on the table," said Smith, who is now one of the department's highest ranking officials. "A small percentage drink, do drugs or commit violence," he said, "but unquestionably, in our assessment, that's a minority."

Enriquez said deputies have felt some pressure to round up laborers who can't prove they are here legally.

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/457778.html

Why should our taxes go to help illegals.....NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is one for Judical watch....

We could cut our crime by getting rid of job seekers.

It doesn't matter if most of them are harmless and JUST WANT TO WORK. They are ILLLLLLLLLLLLEGAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !! The don't need to be here period.