Tensions Mount As Day Laborers Face Arrest Threat

Mark Derby, left, senior pastor of Grace United Methodist Church, and David Rocha, pastor of Camino de Vida United Methodist Church, pray during a demonstration to call attention to the needs of immigrant day laborers. (By Ricky Carioti -- The Washington Post)

Police told day laborers yesterday that they would face arrest if they continue to gather at a Gaithersburg parking lot each morning to wait for employers to hire them.

About a dozen Gaithersburg police officers arrived before sunrise to monitor the shopping center parking lot at 117 N. Frederick Ave. in response to a request from the property's owner, D.C.-based S&B Partnership.

A demonstration at the parking lot yesterday drew few of the 75 to 100 day laborers who have gathered there regularly in recent years. Most of them feared arrest, said those who did turn out.

The dozen or so laborers who were there, all of them immigrants, had a prayer vigil and marched to City Hall with seven ministers and priests from local churches and officials from CASA of Maryland, a nonprofit advocacy group for immigrants.

No arrests were made, but Gaithersburg Police Chief Mary Ann Viverette said officers would continue to enforce trespassing laws indefinitely. "This is not an immigration issue," she said. "It's a trespassing law issue."

The controversy has polarized the city of 58,000 and heightened tensions between city and county officials. The County Council has pushed Gaithersburg, which is 20 percent Latino, to open a center similar to county-funded facilities in Wheaton and Silver Spring, where day laborers learn English and computer skills while waiting for jobs such as painting houses and laying brick.

Last year, the city agreed to refurbish a nearby building, at 17 N. Frederick Ave., if the county leased it. But those plans were scuttled when residents complained. Since then, city officials have been searching for another site, but county officials have questioned their commitment.

"We remain committed to assisting the City in getting a center operable, but are concerned that Gaithersburg has made little progress in identifying a permanent site," the county's chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, wrote to Gaithersburg City Manager David B. Humpton on Tuesday.

Humpton said the city has worked for a year to find a center, considering and rejecting 30 locations. He said the city is in discussions with another shopping center owner. "It is difficult here," he said. "It is difficult everywhere to find a worker site."

Paul Meehan, the property manager of the shopping center, said S&B Partnership asked police to enforce the trespassing law because "the neighborhood put a lot of pressure on the owners to stop people gathering in the parking lot."

CASA of Maryland officials and the clergy members advised the laborers to begin gathering this morning in the parking lot of the county-leased North Frederick Avenue building that was going to be converted into a center.

Last night, county spokesman David Weaver said Humpton had sent county officials a letter asking them to authorize city police to enforce trespassing laws at the county-leased building at 17 N. Frederick Ave. Romer sent a letter declining to do so, and he said the county would consider accepting an offer from the pastor of Gaithersburg's St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church to place a temporary center there.