New Jersey's Freehold Draws Undocumented Labor

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Freehold Borough, New Jersey, was made famous by Bruce Springsteen in his song "My Hometown." The song is about racial conflict and industrial decline. These days, Freehold is very different from what it was when Springsteen lived there, but it's still struggling with big economic and racial changes. In just two decades, Freehold has become a magnet for undocumented workers, and a court battle has erupted over what to do about them. NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.

JIM ZARROLI reporting:

On a narrow weed-choked sliver of land between a railroad track and a busy road, about two dozen men sit idly under a boiling sun and wait. Most are here illegally from Mexico and Central America, and they've come hoping to find work for the day. They're people like Benjamin(ph), who's from the Mexican state of Chiapas.

BENJAMIN (Chiapas): (Through Translators) I come here to wait for contractors. Landscaping and construction are the most common jobs I get. I get 50 or $60 a day, and sometimes I get really good pay, like a hundred dollars a day.

ZARROLI: This little roadside area in Freehold Borough, New Jersey, is known as the muster zone, and it's become a flash point in a fight over where the town is going. This borough of 11,000 was once an uneasy mixture of working-class whites and African-Americans. But in recent years, it's also become home to about 3,000 Latino immigrants. Lifelong residents, such as 33-year-old Diane Gallatro(ph), say that's altered Freehold. She says a decade ago, there were just a few Latino kids in each classroom at the local schools.

Ms. DIANE GALLATRO (Resident, Freehold Borough): And now if you walk into the classrooms, it's 50 to 60, maybe even 70 percent in each classroom, so my children are the minority now.

ZARROLI: Gallatro is sitting in a car a few hundred feet away from the muster zone. She's part of a group called PEOPLE(ph) that opposes illegal immigration in Freehold. The group's members insist they are not opposed to legal immigrants. But because of its location, Freehold attracts a lot of people who are here illegally.

Mr. MARC LEVINE (Former Town Councilman, Freehold Borough): We're considered the hole in the doughnut.

ZARROLI: Marc LeVine is a former town councilman.

Mr. LEVINE: If you ride around town, you'll see that we're completely surrounded by a much bigger township where there are tremendous--we call them McMansions. They're homes that average anywhere from 800,000 to a million dollars, where there's a tremendous need for landscaping services, tremendous need for construction services, tremendous need for retail in this area.

ZARROLI: The availability of jobs has drawn thousands of undocumented workers to western Monmouth County. And because Freehold Borough is the only place around with a walkable downtown and a good supply of older rental housing, many of the workers end up living here.

Seventeen-year-old Umberto(ph) lives with six other people in a three-room apartment on a tree-lined side street in Freehold. This used to be a single-family home, but the owner divided it up, slapped on some discount-grade carpets and paneling and now rents it out. Umberto's apartment costs about $1,600 a month. Umberto, who has a job off the books in a deli, feels very much at home in Freehold.

UMBERTO: I like it, you know. It's all quiet and nice to live in. A lot of people friendly. If you're nice to them, you know, they're nice, you know.

ZARROLI: But many residents say the influx of undocumented workers living in crowded apartments has put a huge strain on borough services such as police and garbage pickup. Nowhere is the strain being felt as much as it is in the schools. The Park Avenue School is so crowded that officials have to constantly juggle space. Kitchens and hallways double as classrooms. A gymnasium is used as a cafeteria. And partitions have been erected across a school stage so it can be used for classes. Superintendent Phil Meara.

Mr. PHIL MEARA (Superintendent, Park Avenue School): We've been very good at really taking the impact of this population increase off the shoulders of our students, and we've done it through creative uses of space, so the impact on students really hasn't been that severe. Our predictions are that if the growth continues, then it is going to start to impact kids.

ZARROLI: Meara says he doesn't know how many of his students come from undocumented families, but even immigrant advocates say at least a portion are. School officials want voters to approve a bond offering so they can build new classrooms. But many residents complain that the borough shouldn't keep having to pay the price for a problem created by lax federal immigration policies. Again, Marc LeVine.

Mr. LEVINE: We cannot handle the entire work force of low-wage earners in western Monmouth County in our town. Why hasn't this problem been dispersed to towns surrounding us? Why hasn't the county come forward to help us? Why hasn't the state come forward to help us? Why hasn't the federal government come forward to help us?

ZARROLI: Meanwhile, to critics, the muster zone has become a kind of symbol of what's gone wrong in Freehold. The borough set up the zone as a way of getting day laborers off the streets and congregating them in one place. Critics say the day laborers would sometimes try to flag down cars to find work, and it scared people. Eventually, the town tried to close the zone, but immigrant groups filed suit, and the fate of the muster zone is now in mediation.

Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)

ZARROLI: In the meantime, day laborers are trying to prove that they can be good neighbors by bringing some order to what used to be a chaotic hiring process. Each morning at the muster zone, someone takes the names of workers who want jobs. Employers who come by have to hire from the list. Many day laborers deeply resent the accusation that they are a drain on public services and pay no taxes. Alejandro Abarca heads Casa Freehold, an immigrants group. He says there's a real demand for cheap labor in Monmouth County, and day laborers are merely trying to meet it.

Mr. ALEJANDRO ABARCA (Casa Freehold): This is the double standard that the town has. On one hand, they say, `I don't want them here.' On the other hand, they say, `OK, I need them to work for me, but I just want them quiet and inside their houses,' and it's not fair.

ZARROLI: The immigrant groups have had some successes. They've persuaded a judge to limit the kinds of tickets that police officers could issue to the workers. In June, they also prevented the controversial group United Patriots of America, which organizes citizen border patrols, from meeting in Freehold. Still, no one disputes that there is a building sentiment against illegal immigration in the borough and that officials here are under pressure to do something about it. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, Freehold Borough, New Jersey.

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