Sebastian Montes/The Gazette Gaithersburg day laborers, including Marco Viracucha (wearing the Radio Capital T-shirt), listen as Assistant City Manager Fredrick Felton (far right) listen during a tour the future site of a labor center. The Rev. David Rocha (in the floral print shirt) translated for the day laborers.

After a moment's thought, Marco Viracucha, a 34-year-old immigrant from Ecuador, worries aloud that the 1,300-foot building could become a trap for the illegal immigrants among them when police or immigration agents come.

Nearly a year after an informal committee of church leaders, city and county officials and Latino community advocates began working to create a safe haven where workers can be sure of fair treatment and employers sure of getting what they've paid for, Viracucha's concerns are not entirely unfounded.

One morning last year, county police threatened the workers with arrest, giving them three days to clear out from the parking lot off Route 355 next to Grace United Methodist Church. And while police have since played an active role in bringing the labor center to fruition, other similar projects in the metropolitan area have been unable to avoid the illegal immigrant controversy, including in Herndon, Va., where a fight over day laborers is dividing the community -- protest, diatribe and all.

"You guys are doing the work that needs to be done in this county," answers Felton, assuring them that County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney Katz have made it clear that immigration is a federal, not local, issue, and promising the workers that "This is not Virginia."

Felton's words carry particular weight for Juan Carlos Miranda, a 30-year-old day laborer from Honduras. Miranda does not have documents, he says, having sealed himself eight years ago in a cargo train heading from Mexico into Texas then making his way to Maryland, the state he heard had the most opportunity.

The main difference: the police in Texas constantly hound illegals, here they do not. And while he has enthusiasm for the labor center, he says he has yet to shake his own ingrained skepticism toward white authority.

Maryland's undocumented immigrant is now more than 200,000, according to Kim Propeack, co-director of organizing and advocacy for Casa de Maryland, a nonprofit that runs similar employment centers in Silver Spring, Takoma Park, one set to open in Wheaton and that will likely run the Gaithersburg center. The majority of those illegal immigrants have come to Maryland following the promise of steady employment, Propeack said, the depressed economy along the U.S.-Mexico border pushing them toward the "tremendous construction boom" here. Though she said there are no estimates on how many of these illegal immigrants are day laborers, CASA is adamant to refute the many assumptions she says plague the issue.

"First of all, not all workers are undocumented and no illegal activity is being conducted [at these centers]," she said. "And in our conversations with the federal government, worker centers have been seen as a solution, not a problem."

More importantly, it is far from unusual for day laborers to bring a high level of skill and training from their native countries, said Propeack, especially in construction, carpentry and painting -- making these sites fertile grounds for smaller businesses looking to hire temporary skilled labor.

Seven months ago, Viraccucha quit his full-time job with a cleaning company because of its $6.50-an-hour wage. Though he may get work only two or three days a week at the parking lot next to Grace United, the trickle of vans and pick-up trucks that pull into the lot carry the potential of earning as much as $30 an hour to put his painting skills to use. Just then, the van he has been waiting for pulls up. He bounds over to the window. The man riding shotgun puts up two fingers. Marco shouts in Spanish to the 30 or so others, "Who are painters here? Two painters!"