Police sweep spurs lawsuit

Dozens of day laborers marched for an hour through Costa Mesa streets Tuesday, chanting slogans and carrying signs to protest a city anti-solicitation ordinance they say unfairly prevents them from gathering in parking lots and public places to look for work.

As the protesters reached City Hall, their destination, a pair of civil rights groups — the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California — filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana that challenges Costa Mesa’s ordinance as “unconstitutional.”

Public gatherings where day laborers wait for work or wave at potential employers in passing vehicles have long been a tactic among many unemployed immigrants in Southern California. But as these gatherings seem to have grown with the recession, so have complaints about them.

The new litigation results from a Costa Mesa police sweep in which undercover officers — after police received more than 100 complaints — posed as undercover employers to round up 12 men at three city locations Sept. 25, MALDEF and ACLU representatives said.

The officers promised the men $8-an-hour jobs, but ended up citing them for violating the anti-solicitation ordinance, activists said. The men were ultimately deported to Mexico within two days of their arrest because they were illegally working and living in the United States, activists said. In many cases, the men left behind wives and children.

“This is clearly a violation of free speech — prohibiting day laborers from seeking employment,” said Thomas Saefonz, president and general counsel for MALDEF in Los Angeles. “It is a cherished right 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.”

The ordinance states that it is 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.”

It’s also illegal to drive by and hire anybody who’s soliciting work from the street, according to the ordinance.

As for those who twirl signs and advertise local businesses, they too are in violation of the ordinance, passed by the city in 2005, activists pointed out.