Lake Forest - The white van eases into a liquor store parking lot and is swarmed by 30 Hispanic day laborers who begin intense job negotiations with the driver. Within seconds, another wave of people descend on the van. Mostly white and middle-age, they snap pictures as they cite federal labor laws.

"If you hire illegal workers, we'll put your picture on the Internet," warns Robin Hvidston, a property manager who became an immigration activist after being alarmed by the number of Hispanics she saw in her Orange County community.

"I hire the legals," the driver, who later identifies himself as Iranian, replies in broken English.

"But these people are not legal," retorts protester Gerry Nance, handing the driver tax and employment eligibility forms.

Frustrated by the federal government's response to illegal immigration and worried that undocumented workers are depressing wages, conservative immigration reform groups are broadening their focus from the U.S.-Mexico border to the workplace - in Southern California, Texas, Illinois, Virginia and elsewhere.

Their method: Take photos of construction bosses and anyone else picking up day laborers, then post the photos on Web sites such as www.wehirealiens.com and www.operationshameonyou.org, sometimes including home addresses and license plate numbers of people who have picked up day laborers. They also turn their footage into immigration officials.

Their objective is twofold - shaming businesses into not hiring undocumented workers and forcing the government to enforce immigration law.

"We knew we would need a two-pronged approach to force the government to deal with this issue," said Chris Simcox, a former school teacher who co-founded the Minutemen, which began civilian border patrols in Arizona a year ago and is now focusing on employers. "Now we want to videotape, expose and embarrass the businesses breaking the law."

The tactics anger business owners, who are threatening lawsuits.

"These are just a personal attacks and they are all false," said Elias Zepeda, accounts manager for Strong Terminators, a termite company in Downey that appears on wehirealiens.com.

Zepeda said the company does not hire undocumented workers.

Other businesses declined comment, though another owner who did talk denied hiring illegals and said he was preparing a lawsuit against wehirealiens.com.

While immigration authorities have made efforts to strengthen border security by hiring thousands more agents, illegal workers are rarely picked up on the job, and businesses hiring them are almost never fined.

An average of 200 workers nationwide were arrested each week during the 1990s, but that dropped to eight a week by 2003, the last year of available data.

Conservatives alarmed by illegal immigration realize that going after businesses may be more important than strengthening the border, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Study, which favors less immigration and stricter enforcement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials evaluate the tips and footage, but often the reports cannot be verified, said Bill Riley, ICE's chief of work site enforcement.

"We'll ask them, 'How do you know they are illegal?'" said Riley. "If they say, 'They look foreign,' that obviously isn't enough."

Though too early to judge their impact, camera-toting protesters do appear to limit the number of workers picked up on any given day.

During three hours at the recent morning protest organized by a group called the Fire Coalition in Lake Forest, an Orange County city 50 miles south of Los Angeles with a large Hispanic population, only one employer ignored the protesters and picked up a day laborer.

About a dozen construction company vehicles entered the parking lot, only to pull away quickly.

"Nobody gets work on the days they come," said Fernando Gomez, a day laborer.

Gomez, 30, from Michoacan, Mexico, said he and most day laborers he knows came to the U.S. illegally.

"But someday we will be legal," he said. "We just want to work. We didn't come to do anything bad to anybody."

Drivers of passing cars gave words of encouragement to the protesters, while others unleashed vulgarities.

"Why don't you guys get a life," yelled a Hispanic man who pulled into the liquor store parking lot. "It's Maria cleaning your toilet and Pedro doing the landscaping at your house. Accept it."

The comments set off a screaming match between the man and protesters.

"People needing labor can hire through temporary agencies," said Nance, 51, an unemployed factory worker.

Liquor store co-owner Joga Siph said a month ago he called the police on the protesters because they were blocking the store entrance. Protesters have since agreed to keep some distance.

"The workers don't bother us," said Siph. "They come, buy something and wait outside a few hours for work."

In Herndon, Va., just outside Washington, D.C., said it has been able to lower the daily number of workers from 150 to 40, said group founder George Taplin. The claim could not be verified.

Taplin and other members of the Herndon Minutemen have filed a suit against the town council for voting to set up a day-labor site with public money - but added that the site would give his group a clear target.

"All we have to do is just stand there with our cameras," said Taplin. "Nobody is going to show up."

"It's a headache when these groups are filming and going to the cities to complain," said Victor Narro, project director of the UCLA Downtown Labor Center, a university affiliate that helps defend laborers' rights. "But they are part of today's immigration reality."

POST A COMMENT

If you are under 13 years of age you may read this message board, but you may not participate. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.