Illegals, Day Laborers Win in 2 Rulings

In one of two victories Friday for immigrants rights advocates, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp said the agency’s community development grants cannot be used for programs that discriminate against illegal aliens.

His directive followed a meeting Wednesday in Washington between Kemp, immigrant rights groups and officials from the city of Costa Mesa, which had tried to bar charitable groups from serving illegal aliens by threatening to cut off their share of the federal money.

In a related development in Orange County, a Superior Court commissioner ruled unconstitutional a portion of a Costa Mesa ordinance that prohibits day laborers from congregating in certain areas of the city with the intent of soliciting work.

That ruling came in response to a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which also filed suit against the city of Encinitas on Friday.

Of his ruling on the use of HUD funds, Kemp said: “The purpose (of community development block grant funds) is to serve the entire community, and if it were predicated on whether a person is documented or not, it would be discriminatory and counterproductive.”

Kemp, who lived for a time in Costa Mesa and whose sister-in-law works at a shelter for battered women there, also said implementation of policies similar to that proposed in Costa Mesa would have the kind of “inflammatory impact in communities that we don’t want in America.”

In ruling against Costa Mesa’s work-solicitation law, Commissioner Ronald L. Bauer said it was “overly broad and vague and impinges on expression of speech.”

“The language (of the ordinance) appears to have the effect of a dragnet that extends far beyond the legitimate goal of regulating traffic,” Bauer said in court.

Costa Mesa adopted a measure that identified three areas of the city that draw the heaviest concentrations of day laborers. It prohibited anyone from being within 300 feet of those sites with the intent to solicit employment from the occupant of a motor vehicle.

The measure empowered police to arrest people based on “circumstantial evidence,” but did not spell out what constituted intent. Previously, police had to catch a day laborer in the act of solicitation.

ACLU attorney Rebecca Jurado hailed the ruling as a clear message that cities cannot, under the pretext of regulating traffic, try to exclude day laborers from parks and other areas where they congregate.

In the Encinitas law, the City Council voted May 23 to empower the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department to cite persons who, on public property or along public streets, stop to solicit day laborers. Conviction calls for a $100 fine on the first violation, and stiffer fines for repeat violations.

Claudia Smith, regional counsel for California Rural Legal Assistance, said the Encinitas ordinance nonetheless unfairly targets people who are legitimately looking for work and have been stymied in finding it at established locations.