TEMECULA —— A protest against residents who hire day laborers turned confrontational Saturday morning after a would-be employer was surrounded by pickets who were shouting and holding signs at a street corner near Wine Country.

Protesters began arriving at Butterfield Stage and Rancho California roads around 8 a.m. and lined the sidewalks, walking up and down Butterfield Stage. Some shouted slogans as they passed small groups of hopeful laborers, grouped in twos and threes along stretches of the sidewalk and on the grass.

The intersection is a place where laborers, some illegal immigrants, often meet early in the morning looking for work. A laborer said protesters meet regularly at the intersection.

The rally, aimed at residents who hire the laborers, remained mostly peaceful until two trucks pulled off the road on Butterfield Stage and their drivers got out in search of workers.

Men and women representing a variety of organizations, including CASA, or Citizens' Alliance for a Secure America, and the Minuteman Project, strode over to one man and surrounded him, shouting, "Arrest the employers."

Steve Prime, there supporting the protest, snapped a photo of the man, who then attempted to take his camera and shoved him, according to Prime. Both sides shouted back and forth, a few obscenities were exchanged and the man got back into his car without further incident. The Riverside County Sheriff's Department was called, and a deputy spoke with some of the people involved.

Robin Hvidston, a member of CASA who organized the event, insisted the group was not trying to make trouble or harass the laborers.

"We always say (the protests) are peaceful. We target the employers," she said. "If they didn't offer the work, the trade would dry up."

Hvidston, along with another woman, earlier tried to cajole a laborer into posing for a photograph with them. Someone snapped a shot of the three of them. A few minutes later, they tried to get the man to pose again, and when he resisted, they began calling him chicken, and the Spanish word for chicken, pollo.

Laborers who congregated on the sidewalk saw the protest not as peaceful, but "harassment."

Rodrigo Ramirez, standing with two others, said the men are just trying to make extra money. He said they have other jobs they work during the week, and employers pay up to $22 an hour for his services on the weekends.

"I just don't know why they're doing it," he said of the rallyers. "For what?"

Earlier that morning, several protesters were walking south on Butterfield Stage behind a laborer. The man looked back and yelled, "I gotta work to eat."

Freeman Sawyer, with the Murrieta-Temecula Republican Assembly, called the hiring of illegal immigrants "the new slavery."

He said immigrants suffer poor working conditions and low wages and receive no benefits, yet the government does little to curb this practice.

Murrieta resident Dottie Dalton, who often is referred to as the T-shirt lady because of the printed shirts she makes and wears, said she spent a month in Arizona, watching the border as part of the Minuteman Project earlier this year.

She doesn't consider herself a vigilante, but what she calls a "vigil-Annie," and referred to the project as the country's largest neighborhood watch.

"I'm 66," she said. "I won't get too many more chances to make history."

Staff writer David Carlson contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Kelly Brusch at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2626, or kbrusch@californian.com.