Latino Day Laborers’ Gripe of Harassment by Deputies Probed : Sheriff: Workers waiting at Lake Forest shops say it’s been going on for months. Merchant reaction is mixed.

Orange County sheriff’s officials are investigating complaints that deputies have for months harassed Latino day laborers at a Lake Forest strip mall.

The investigation follows a complaint to Sheriff Mike Carona from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. The complaint charges that deputies have singled out Latino day laborers who gather at the strip mall at Jeronimo and El Toro roads to wait for work.

Deputies allegedly harassed the men by barring them from businesses, using ethnic slurs and giving them tickets for loitering.

“It’s selective targeting,” said Victor Narro of the immigrant rights group, which wrote to Carona July 26. “They don’t do that to anybody who is patronizing the store except Latino males.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Mike James, who heads the Lake Forest substation, said the investigation would be concluded by Friday.

“We will figure out what happened and take whatever action is appropriate,” he said. As part of the investigation, sheriff’s officials will review surveillance images taken of deputies by a camera inside a liquor store at the strip mall, he said.

“We’ve seen deputies [on the tape] contact male Hispanics inside and outside the store, so we’re in the process of finding out why they contacted them,” James said.

The Sheriff’s Department, which serves as the city police force under a contract with Lake Forest, does enforce the city’s ban on soliciting work on the street, James said. Both employer and worker can be ticketed, he said.

But Narro said the ordinance “doesn’t give them the right to selectively target groups of men and discriminate against them.”

Day laborers also complained that deputies detained half a dozen men Friday for no reason and turned them over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. INS confirmed that Lake Forest deputies that day turned over seven men--six of whom were voluntarily returned to Mexico.

James said department policy does not allow deputies to stop people without cause and detain them simply because they have no identification.

Business owners in the strip mall, which Carona visited earlier this month after getting the letter, are divided on the issue.

At Mr. J’s Liquor, where men sit under umbrellas at plastic tables while waiting for job offers, owner Alan Ladd takes issue with what he sees as discrimination against the workers. He said he complained 10 months ago to the city about the deputies’ treatment of those men.

“Please understand, I’m not against the Sheriff’s Department,” Ladd said. “But some of these deputies are horrendous.”

Ladd said one deputy came to his store Thursday to bother the men there 11 times before 2 p.m. “He makes them get up and leave whether they’re eating or not,” Ladd said.

But Xuan Lee, who owns a cleaning business opposite Mr. J’s Liquor, said the workers hurt his business.

“They come here too much, and yell at the lady customers. When cars come to pick them up, [the cars] block the entrance,” Lee said.

Day laborers at the corner said the city could solve the problem by designating a place for them to solicit work.

“Other cities have done this, why can’t Lake Forest? Is it because the people are racist?” said one worker who declined to give his name but said he lives in Lake Forest. “Of course, some people don’t want us here, but some do.”

The city of Laguna Beach built a day worker solicitation site on Laguna Canyon Road. Other cities have done similar things.