The bright orange postcard is easy to spot on display at souvenir shops that dot Avalon: "Help! I'm marooned on Catalina Island."
Goofy keepsake for most visitors, but for Avalon resident Jorge Rodriguez, 28, an illegal immigrant and construction worker who's lived on the island since he was a teenager, the card's gag has an uncanny note of accuracy.
"You can't go there anymore," Rodriguez said, gesturing north to the mainland. "Since they started checking los IDs, everyone's afraid."
Avalon's sizable Latino community has been abuzz for months with stories and rumors of periodic documentation checks by U.S. Coast Guard and immigration officials on the ferries that connect Avalon to the mainland, where workers go for cheaper food, medical care, family visits and to spend their wages at Southern California theme parks.
For generations, the Spanish-speaking locals have called the mainland "el otro lado," the other side, borrowing a phrase more commonly used to refer to the U.S.-Mexico border. But for some, the 22 miles of sea that separate Avalon from mainland Los Angeles really has become a border, one that many are wondering whether they'll ever risk crossing again.
"I haven't left since I heard they were out there," said restaurant worker Juan Moreno, 43, sitting on a bench at Island Plaza during a lunch break, calmly finishing a cigarette. "Well, what else can I do?"
Moreno went to Avalon as many others did: young, sometimes barely teenagers, eager to fill jobs in Catalina Island's tourism industry. Usually, a relative lured them directly to the island with stories of plentiful jobs, a safe, quiet community and Catalina's natural beauty.
With false papers or no papers at all, illegal immigrants have thrived as cooks, maids and builders and in other low-wage or service jobs. Many have built families in the one-square-mile town of about 3,000. A little less than half the population is Latino, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
"For a long time, one of us would go back home [to Mexico] during wintertime, telling people 'It's going good, there are jobs,' and then come back with two or three others," said Jose Luis Cervantes, 44, a naturalized citizen who seems to greet everyone he meets on Avalon's brick sidewalks with a familiar wave.
Cervantes said he's lived in Avalon since he was 14. "I know everyone here. We're all like one family."
That closeness, some said, is what made news of the document checks spread so quickly.
