Save Our State Organization

As Congress debates the polarizing issue of immigration, the founder of an anti-illegal immigrant group is pushing for San Bernardino to outlaw day labor sites and bar the undocumented from renting property.

A petition drive to ban day-labor centers and bar illegal immigrants from renting apartments in San Bernardino has gathered enough signatures to force a City Council vote on the proposal, potentially setting off another political maelstrom in a Southern California city grappling with immigration issues.

For a couple of hours Saturday, a small group of demonstrators made Slauson Avenue in the tiny city of Maywood feel like the red-hot center of the national debate over immigrant rights. A few dozen people from Save Our State and like-minded groups lined up behind police barricades, shouted into bullhorns and waved American flags to protest characterizations of the heavily Latino, square-mile city by some elected officials as a sanctuary for illegal immigrants.

For 12 years, public artwork near the Baldwin Park Metrolink station never caused a stir. But when a Ventura-based group that opposes illegal immigration got wind of what was inscribed on the artwork this month, they organized a protest that garnered attention when it was announced on the "John & Ken Show" on KFI-AM (640). By Saturday, activists on both sides of the immigration issue mobilized, resulting in a sometimes chaotic confrontation in the San Gabriel Valley community.

Set at the junction of two freeways and along a major railroad route, the working-class town of Baldwin Park likes to call itself "the Hub of the San Gabriel Valley." But the city, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles and nearly 80% Latino, today finds itself the hub of an increasingly bitter fight over illegal immigration.

As the insults flew and the protest reached a boil, Joseph Turner couldn't help but smile. The 29-year-old head of the upstart Save Our State organization had come to Baldwin Park to pick a fight over illegal immigration. He had led a band of like-minded souls into the heart of the city to protest public art they deemed "seditious and anti-American."

Save Our State, the in-your-face anti-illegal immigration group, was thrilled. Its long-held desire to forge ties to the black community was at last to be realized. Invited to speak to a black community forum in Leimert Park this month, SOS founder Joseph Turner was sure that by the time he finished expressing his outrage about the impact of illegal immigration on jobs, schools and neighborhoods, Save Our State would have new, equally outraged allies. But it was not to be.