NORTH COUNTY -- McGonigle Canyon property owners have posted security guards on their land Friday to keep out illegal immigrants who have been illegally camping there for more than 10 years -- all on the eve of a campout protest by several hundred people decrying that they and the city were turning a blind eye to the illegal immigrants and the activities that take place there near homes.

Police Capt. Boyd Long said the property owners mean they don't want anyone trespassing on their property, not even protesters. So, police are offering an area of city-owned land for a peaceful protest, but they will not allow camping or protesters to go into the canyon, he said.

"We're prepared to make arrests of people trespassing, if we're asked," Long said.

Meanwhile, Long said he'd been told the migrants who lived in that canyon had packed up and left on their own Friday, apparently in anticipation of the protest. Long said police had no idea where the migrants had gone.

Some immigrant rights activists have said that the goal of the protest was to harass the workers. The migrants, many from Mexico, work at nearby nurseries and cannot afford the high cost of rents in North County.

The property owners had also posted the area with no trespassing signs recently, he said.

Despite this, people still plan to come to make sure the property owners do enforce their own order. The protest was planned for 2 p.m. in the canyon, but Long said they can now go to the end of Torrey Santa Fe Road and protest.

"I will be there," said Julie Adams, a Rancho Penasquitos resident who lives less than a mile from the camps.

She said the concern with the illegal immigrant encampments is that they attract crime such as prostitution, pollution and fire hazards. Long said as of last Friday, between 150 and 180 illegal immigrants were living in the canyon in makeshift tents.

Adams said radio talk-show host Rick Roberts widely promoted the protest on his show and Web site. She was a guest on his show when someone suggested the campout, but she said she is not an organizer.

The campout protest, she said, took on a life of its own with Roberts getting e-mails from people in Northern California planning to come. Adams said she was interviewed by the BBC and Los Angeles-area media who planned to cover the protest.

So, when word came late Friday from Long asking her to spread the word that the campout was off, she said she has no way of reaching all the people expected to come.

Adams said she feels the whole thing has been handled poorly by the property owners and the city because they could have called it off earlier in the week.

She said U.S. citizens are going to show up to do a peaceful protest and be told that while illegal immigrants have lived in the canyon for years, they can't be there.

"I just feel people are going to be mad," Adams said. "This (new) plan may cause problems."

Adams does add that she is glad that the property owners are finally clearing the camps, but she said she will continue to watch the canyon to make sure they keep it up and don't allow the illegal immigrants to return.

Jeff Schwilk, of the San Diego Minutemen, a North County-based anti-illegal immigration group, said some of his minutemen planned to be there to lend support to the area residents, but they were not organizing the protest, either.

"As far as I know, everybody's still coming because they want to make sure that the property owners are doing what they said," Schwilk said.

He added that he is disappointed that the federal authorities have been staying silent on this matter all week.

- Contact staff writer Yvette Urrea at (760) 901-4076 or yurrea@nctimes.com.