Costa Mesa can get U.S. immigration help

Federal officials have offered to assign a full-time immigration agent to the Costa Mesa City Jail to check the residency status of all inmates , a response to lobbying by the town’s anti-illegal-immigration activists, including Mayor Allan Mansoor.

The proposal, if accepted, would make Costa Mesa the only city in Orange or Los Angeles counties to have its own federal immigration agent stationed in a city jail, said Jim Hayes, a regional director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He offered the city federal help in a letter Thursday.

Although immigration officials are stationed in county jails, the new agent would distinguish Costa Mesa from most Southern California city jails, where federal officers visit only intermittently, if at all.

Mansoor and his supporters said the federal offer was a recognition of the national attention generated by their campaign against illegal immigration in Costa Mesa, a city of 110,000 best known as home to South Coast Plaza shopping center. The city has not yet received Hayes’ written offer, and the process by which it would be accepted was unclear.

“It’s amazing what a little public pressure will do to get government officials to do their job,” said Mansoor, who handily won a second term on the City Council this month. “My point all along is that ICE should have been doing this, but since they were not doing it, I felt the need to pursue it.”

As a result of the offer, Costa Mesa may abandon a plan Mansoor promoted that would have made the city the first in the country to train city police to check if inmates held on felony charges were in the country legally. Those arrested on misdemeanors would not have been checked.

Under the federal proposal, any person jailed in Costa Mesa, whether facing misdemeanor or felony charges, could be deported if not legally in the United States, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said.

Although cities such as Los Angeles, Anaheim and Santa Ana have among the largest percentage of foreign-born population in the country, Hayes said he had addressed Costa Mesa first because it was referring more cases to his department, about five to seven each week.

Police officials in Costa Mesa said they did not keep such statistics on referrals and questioned whether Hayes’ numbers were correct. Hayes said if a federal agent screened all detainees in Costa Mesa, 10 to 20 suspects a week could face deportation.

Some locals were concerned that the news could create widespread fear in the immigrant community. “This will create fear among people who have been here for decades,” said Ivan Calderon, a Costa Mesa restaurateur. “It could encourage racial profiling and make it less likely that an immigrant will report a crime. That means they become prey to criminals.”

Other Latino activists say the federal move is an effort to override Mansoor’s efforts to train city police to enforce federal immigration laws.

Amin David, who heads Los Amigos of Orange County, a civic group, said he was pleased the federal government “pulled the rug out from under Mansoor.” Police “should never be involved in immigration. There should be a clear line between federal and local duties,” he said.

Councilwoman Katrina Foley agreed. She said the federal government had long ago promised agents in the jail but had dedicated funding elsewhere for years.

Mansoor, an Orange County sheriff’s deputy at the County Jail, said, “The issue is that we have not been deporting illegal aliens who commit crimes. We need to do that at a bare minimum. Whether a Costa Mesa official does it or not doesn’t matter.”

jennifer.delson@latimes.com