Trust tugs at the heart of immigration debate

One reason we don’t seem to get anywhere on illegal immigration issues is that neither side completely trusts the other. And there may be no better symbol of that than the 37-year-old illegal immigrant now sitting in a federal detention center in Lancaster.

His name is Marcelino Tzir Tzul , and it would be much more clarifying for the illegal-immigration debate if he’d been a dangerous felon. Then all of us could have stood as one and applauded Costa Mesa police for getting a dangerous criminal off the streets and on his way out of the country. It would have muted concern that Latino men were being targeted in Costa Mesa.

But as colleague Jennifer Delson reported a week ago, Tzir was stopped one morning last month for riding his bicycle on the wrong side of Hamilton Street. The officer asked to see some ID, and Tzir had none. Nor did he have a bicycle license. He was taken to the city jail, where a federal agent assigned to the city determined he was in the country illegally. A Guatemalan, Tzir now awaits a deportation hearing.

Let me start by repeating what I’ve written before: I’m against illegal immigration and, like anyone with a brain, want serious felons off the streets. And if we can deport them and keep them out of the U.S. after incarceration, so much the better.

However, I think the overwhelming majority of illegal residents pretty much do what the rest of us do with our lives -- try to make a living and stay out of trouble. For that reason, I don’t have the passion for going after illegal residents that some others do. Nor do I trust the core reason usually cited: that the “other side” is only trying to enforce the law in going after illegals.

My usually snappy retort is that I don’t think the bulk of the “other side” would give a whit if it were known we had a large Canadian or Australian illegal-resident problem.

But back to Tzir. Yes, he is a lawbreaker. He told Delson he knew it was wrong but that he entered the U.S. illegally to make money for his family in Guatemala, which he had left behind when he came here in 2005.

Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor has put his political capital into combating illegal immigration. He apparently has more than a fair share of his constituents behind him, because he and political ally Wendy Leece both won council seats in 2006, a year dominated by illegal immigration talk in their city.

Mansoor doesn’t lament Tzir’s arrest. We talked at some length Friday afternoon, and the mayor said, “If someone has no identification, we can’t just look the other way. We have to verify their identity. If you or I are stopped, we have to identify ourselves.”

That’s where the trust issue enters the picture. I’ve never been stopped in Costa Mesa, so I can’t dispute the mayor. But I find it hard to believe that if I’d been biking on the wrong side of the road, minus my wallet, that I’d be taken to jail. I’m picturing a short lecture from the cop and him directing me and my bike to the other side of the street.

Mansoor disagrees and says police should enforce the laws equally. Once police decided to cite Tzir, he says, they obviously had to determine who he was. There was no way to do that without his identification, he says.

And so it goes. I’m not calling the mayor a liar, because he may well want the police to do just that. But when arguing last year for a crackdown on illegal immigration, he wrote in an essay for The Times that the idea wasn’t to go looking for suspected illegals. The proposal being debated then was to involve some Costa Mesa officers in illegal immigration inquiries. That proposal has been scuttled.

“Officers would simply carry out the [proposed] policy through the course of their daily duties if they arrest someone for a major crime,” Mansoor wrote then. “There would be no sweeps for enforcement of immigration laws alone, as some have been concerned about. In other words, there must be another crime involved first.”

Later in the same article, he wrote that one of his goals was “to make Costa Mesa safer.”

Mansoor said Friday that Tzir obviously isn’t the kind of illegal resident he had in mind last year but noted that the essay was written in the context of discussing the proposed policy. The procedure now, he said, is that police make their normal arrests and that a federal official at the jail determines the arrestee’s status.

So, we’re back to whether a blue-eyed blond would be taken to jail over a bicycle infraction.

Despite what we think, none of us can get inside someone else’s head. Those more sympathetic to illegal residents can’t say for sure that those on the other side are acting out of racist motives.

And those pushing tough anti-illegal immigration positions might fairly ask why it matters whether Tzir had committed a bicycle infraction or a murder. Illegal is illegal, they say.

The comeback to that, as voiced by many Costa Mesa residents and quietly by some police, is that looking for nonviolent illegal immigrants isn’t worth the trouble. Some believe illegal residents take jobs Anglos don’t want (a point the mayor disputes) and that a perceived crackdown on them might deter other illegal residents who see crimes committed from helping police.

Mansoor has heard it all before and says the idea is simply to rid Costa Mesa of felons there illegally. He also dislikes the fact that foreigners stay in America illegally while others wait patiently to become legal residents.

“My goal is to reduce crime and uphold our laws,” he said Friday. Noting that Tzir’s crime wasn’t major, he added, “keep in mind we still get people coming to council meetings who ask all the time to enforce laws about people riding bicycles on sidewalks. Are we supposed to look the other way?”

Delson reported last week 46 Latino men were picked up during a three-week period in December and handed over for deportation hearings. Of the 20 whose arrest records the city provided her, most were suspected of felonies.

For that, we applaud.

And if the mayor believes that he or I would be taken to jail for not having ID on our person for a bicycling infraction, who can dispute him?

Costa Mesa may well be on its way to becoming safer.

One wayward bicyclist at a time.

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.