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Encinitas group targets illegal-immigrant hiring
By Elena Gaona
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 21, 2006

ENCINITAS – In its first official action, the Encinitas Citizens Brigade protested the hiring of illegal immigrants at a popular day-labor site on Encinitas Boulevard yesterday.

Some two dozen residents from Encinitas and around Southern California had just formed the Minuteman offshoot group over coffee and eggs at 7 a.m.

"Glad to see you all here," group founder Saul Lisauskas, 62, a mechanical engineer in Encinitas, told the group over breakfast. "Welcome. This is the start of this group."

As tensions rise over illegal immigration, the Encinitas Citizens Brigade joins the Vista Citizens Brigade and the San Diego Minutemen out of Oceanside as the third Minuteman Project offshoot group of citizens organized against illegal immigration in North County. Armed with signs, flags and cameras, the new group then headed to a day-labor spot just west of Interstate 5 where about two dozen laborers and about a dozen immigrant supporters waited with their own flags, signs and video cameras.

A rotating group of about four sheriff's deputies kept watch over the generally peaceful protest, which escalated no further than tense, face-to-face discussions between the two camps and a few heated shouts.
"We're just U.S. citizens protecting our country," said Minuteman and retired lab technician Larry Culbertson of San Juan Capistrano, who helped the local group get started.

"No trabajo hoy!" – no work today – he shouted to day laborers and in the direction of their would-be employers.

"Only Traitors Hire Illegals," one sign read.

A handful of hirings still took place across the street and behind the crowd, but roofers, landscapers and painters drove their trucks past the site and drove away without workers.

Lisauskas said the Minuteman groups are accomplishing their purpose – to remove the work incentive for immigrants to come to places such as North County.

The Encinitas Citizens Brigade members were given yellow fliers to hand out to potential employers, warning them: "Hiring Illegal Aliens is a Federal Crime! . . . DO NOT pick up workers from day labor sites. The majority of the workers are in this country illegally."

Day laborers saw few jobs and instead held up flags and signs, saying they are glad to be in America and just want to work.

"They are racists," undocumented immigrant Erik Lopez, 17, of Guatemala said as he stood looking at the crowd. "They treat us like dirt, when we are the ones who keep their homes in order."

Lopez, who has been coming to the pickup site for about a year, said Minuteman groups have visited the site about seven times and that it is decreasing the number of jobs he gets.

Claudia Smith, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance, was at the demonstration and says such rallies are bullying tactics that infringe upon the rights of permanent U.S. residents who may seek work at day-labor sites.

The Minutemen have a policy of not asking for the documents of any workers, said San Diego Minutemen founder and retired Marine Jeff Schwilk of Oceanside. Schwilk says the groups aren't racist, and that it is Latino activists who appear to be racist by not assimilating.

Though the Encinitas protest was peaceful, similar gatherings in Vista have gotten ugly, immigrant supporters said.

Minutemen in Vista recently harassed day laborers and Latino store owners at a popular day-labor site at a Vista shopping center, said Sylvia Ramos with Vista's Coalition of Justice, Peace and Dignity, a human-rights group.

Self-employed furniture finisher Mike Spencer of Vista, who helped start the Vista Citizens Brigade, said the group's actions are peaceful.

Patrols of day-labor sites and monitoring of camps where immigrant workers live in crude shanty homes will continue in Vista, Fallbrook, Ramona, Poway, Carlsbad, Oceanside and Escondido, the groups' members said.

"We need to get on with the job the president will not do," Lisauskas said.