Human Rights December 2007
Human Rights During A Crisis
The Undocumented and the Firestorms of 2007
by Nicole Pugh
Regardless of how we [may] feel it is wrong for them to cross the border and all the rhetoric that is being used to criminalize and dehumanize them, we have to remember that [the undocumented] are human beings—they are somebody’s father, somebody’s son, somebody’s daughter. - Tina Jillings, Vista Human Rights Coalition
Last October’s fires created hardships for thousands of San Diego residents who lost homes, personal belongings and memories in the flames. For many documented and undocumented migrant workers and their families living in makeshift camps around the county, lack of information, insensitive working environments, racist attacks by local groups and the nebulous presence of Border Patrol agents at evacuation centers turned an emergency situation for the entire county into one where fear and lack of services was predominant.
When the fires began, the reverse 911 system that so effectively informed thousands of San Diegans about the evacuation status of their neighborhoods did not reach individuals living in the canyons and open cropland around the county. The result was that some people fled with only the shirts on their backs as the flames approached. A few did not make it out alive. Others continued to work in mandatory evacuation areas without masks or other protection from the smoky air.
“On Tuesday, October 23rd, an evacuation order was issued to residents of the Del Mar/ Penasquitos neighborhoods via reverse 911 calls… AFSC (American Friends’ Service Committee) staff members and volunteers observed migrant farm workers laboring in the fields adjacent to the evacuation area on Leslie Farms as well as Evergreen Nursery…,” explains a preliminary report entitled The State of Civil and Human Rights for Migrant Communities in San Diego County during the Firestorms of October 2007, published by the AFSC. “That same afternoon,” the report continues, “the Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Bi-Nacionales (FIOB), AFSC and the Mexican Consulate visited a second site in Poway, where farm workers live without formal shelter, in an attempt to evacuate [them]. The workers did not evacuate, primarily out of fear of profiling and/or the proximity to their work site from the shelter.”
Racial profiling is always a concern for Latinos in a region where immigration is a hot topic. It was also a factor in whether Latinos felt safe to receive services during the fires. According to the AFSC report, Border Patrol agents were seen at several evacuee centers, including Qualcomm Stadium. The reason for their presence is still not clearly known as statements made by Border Patrol officials to local news media have been inconsistent. Members of at least one family, the Santiago family from Scripps Ranch, were arrested and deported after seeking refuge at Qualcomm Stadium during the week of the fires.
“I will never minimize what happened to people who lost their homes,” says Tina Jillings, founder and director of the Vista Human Rights Committee, a North San Diego County organization that provides assistance and support to migrant workers. “My friends are devastated—all the things that were important to them [are gone]. But there are resources available to them. When you are hiding in a canyon and you have to come out of that canyon and let yourself be seen and vulnerable, then you have nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, no way to keep warm, no way to eat and no way to work—that is devastation. I think that what occurred with [migrant workers during the fires] is that they had been…treated horribly, unfairly and un-American. The American people have never been a people who say, ‘You are deserving and you aren’t.’ ”
According to a Summer 2007 report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, during the 1980s as many as 10,000 migrant workers camped in areas such as McGonigle Canyon between Carmel Valley and Rancho Penasquitos. Because of development and increasingly aggressive attacks from vandals and anti-immigrant groups such as the San Diego Minutemen, an extremist organization formed in 2005 by nativist Jeff Schwilk, this population has dropped significantly. Organizations like the Vista Human Rights Committee and the AFSC continue to help the most disadvantaged victims of the Fires of 2007.
“I began a donation center at a home in Vista and a home in Fallbrook and we just put the word out,” says Jillings. “We need [warm] clothes, blankets, pillows, and canned food.” Also needed are bottled water, children’s toys and furniture.
Donation drop offs are located at 128 W. Indian Rock Rd. in Vista (760.419.2274) and 260 Almond St. in Fallbrook (760.468.4519). For more information, please contact Tina Jillings: latina_jillings@hotmail.com or 760.828.5576. The AFSC Report can be found at afsc.org/give/sandiegofire-update1.htm. For more on immigration issues, check out The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers by Jane Guskin & David L. Wilson (2007, Monthly Review Press, NY),