Encinitas Raids Lead to Deportation of 28

After receiving many complaints from Encinitas residents about the presence of transients and illegal aliens in encampments around the city, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and U.S. Border Patrol arrested 29 people Sunday and deported 28 of them, officials said.

Sheriff’s deputies from the Encinitas station and Border Patrol agents entered four encampments and arrested 29 people for trespassing, said Deputy Larry Van Dusen, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Twenty-eight of those arrested were illegal aliens, said Ted Swofford, a Border Patrol spokesman.

Twenty-five volunteered for immediate deportation and deportation proceedings were started against the remaining three, who are suspected of criminal activities, Swofford said.

The joint action follows complaints to the Sheriff’s Department about people living outdoors or in makeshift huts on property they don’t have permission to use, Van Dusen said.

Complaints have centered on unsanitary conditions at the encampments, illegal fires, public drunkenness, littering, fighting, drug activity and verbal harassment of children who pass near the camps.

Sgt. Ron Morse, of the sheriff’s Encinitas station, said one or two complaints a day are received.

“I get calls from grocery store managers about shoplifters, who, as soon as the back door is open, they come in and steal things,” Morse said.

But a community activist said the arrests might be in response to the city repealing its ban on curbside hiring a few weeks ago, just two days before a court hearing on a suit filed against the city over the ban.

“Their follow-up strategy is to do the sweeps and follow up on the complaints of the merchants,” said Roberto Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker service organization. “It’s in retaliation because they lost the ban.”

Martinez said the Sheriff’s Department might have overstepped its bounds by working with the Border Patrol.

Van Dusen said it was the first joint effort by sheriff’s deputies and the Border Patrol.

“It got to the point where the complaints were so frequent and the problem escalating that it was time for the Sheriff’s Department to take some larger action,” Van Dusen said.

Border Patrol officials said their agents have worked with other agencies, such as the San Diego Police Department and the California Highway Patrol, on the problem of illegal aliens.

“We do it all over,” Swofford said. “We just cross paths all the time.”