Free Republic

SAN DIEGO -- A Superior Court judge ordered San Diego police to return some property that was seized from the Oceanside home of an anti-illegal immigration activist. Police were told to return to San Diego Minutemen group founder Jeff Schwilk any property that is unrelated to a crime or not part of an investigation into alleged vandalism at three migrant camps in San Diego's McGonigle Canyon. Schwilk's group has pressured authorities to evict the migrant squatters

SAN DIEGO -- For 20 years, many of the illegal immigrants drawn by jobs in tomato fields have worshipped at an outdoor church, a concrete altar in a canyon where they slept under the shelter of plywood and plastic tarps and bathed in a stream. Today, however, McGonigle Canyon is overshadowed by multimillion-dollar homes, and police and landowners want the eyesores gone. The squatters and their tree-covered place of worship, which the Roman Catholic church installed in the 1980s, are being expelled in one of the latest skirmishes in the nation's battle over illegal immigration and homeless squatters' camps. "We're...

SAN DIEGO — For 20 years, many of the illegal immigrants drawn by jobs in tomato fields have worshipped at an outdoor church, a concrete altar in a canyon where they slept under the shelter of plywood and plastic tarps and bathed in a stream. Today, however, McGonigle Canyon is overshadowed by multimillion-dollar homes, and police and landowners want the eyesores gone. The squatters and their tree-covered place of worship, which the Roman Catholic church installed in the 1980s, are being expelled in one of the latest skirmishes in the nation's battle over illegal immigration and homeless squatters' camps. "We're...

HOWARD LIPIN / Union-Tribune An estimated 300 people live in McGonigle Canyon, many of whom attend a makeshift Catholic church. The residents face eviction later this month. Developers pushing illegal inhabitants, their chapel, off land set to become new neighborhood, In what may seem like déjà vu, people living in migrant camps in McGonigle Canyon will be ordered to move soon. It will be the latest attempt to clear people living in illegal huts from the undeveloped land between Carmel Valley and Rancho Peñasquitos, an area that is shrinking as it gives way to new houses. An outdoor chapel with...