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.