Anxiety grows among local Latinos

The talk inside Alicia Andrade’s herbal shop on West 19th Street on Wednesday afternoon was about the reelection of Mayor Allan Mansoor to the Costa Mesa City Council.

Inside her small aromatic store, Andrade and a male customer wondered if Mansoor’s reelection meant that his controversial plan to train police officers to check the immigration status of suspected felons would go into effect soon.

“We’re going to have to wait and see what he does,” Andrade said in Spanish.

The small-business owner said she has experienced the effect of Mansoor’s plan since it was approved by the Costa Mesa City Council last December.

Since February of this year, the number of customers patronizing her shop dropped noticeably. The customers have decreased because they are moving out of the city, to cities like Santa Ana, she said.

Andrade, who did not vote in Tuesday’s election, thinks business may get worse for merchants like herself.

“Vote for what?” she said. “Everything is fixed, like in Mexico.”

Noemi Garcia, who said she is in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen, said if she had been eligible to vote, her vote would not have gone to Mansoor, who along with parks commissioner Wendy Leece stressed the need to rid the city of illegal immigrants in their election campaign.

Through the Spanish media, Garcia said she learned about his plan.

“The talk about him is that he is a racist,” said Garcia, who was walking with her two young daughters along West 19th Street on Tuesday afternoon.

Efforts to reach Mansoor to respond were unsuccessful, but on Mansoor’s election campaign website, he wrote that his plan is not racist and is about public safety.

“I fully support legal immigration and respect those who come here legally. This is not about race, but about criminal offenses and legal status,” Mansoor wrote on his website.

Garcia also took issue with Mansoor’s campaign pledge to crack down on crime.

“I heard, too, that he supposedly wants to clean the city of gangs,” Garcia said. “But Costa Mesa is not known for gangs, like Santa Ana or Los Angeles.”

In the five years she has lived in Costa Mesa, Garcia said she has never been harassed by gang members or heard about a serious gang problem in the city.

Neither has Alex Rodriguez, who works in a cellphone accessory business on West 19th Street.

Rodriguez, who is waiting to become a U.S. citizen, said he was disappointed in the council election results. But he was glad to hear the Democrats took over the House of Representatives.

The 12-year resident said he had never seen such a division in the community as there is now over the mayor’s plan.

Miguel, who has lived in Costa Mesa for one of the four years he’s been in the United States, said the division in the community came from the anti-immigrant sentiment encouraged by conservative politicians.

“I don’t consider myself a criminal because I am undocumented,” said Miguel, who would give only his first name because he feared Costa Mesa police would track him down and deport him.

Miguel, who came from the Mexican state of Jalisco, said he works in a restaurant.

“We come here to work, not to steal. I work hard for very little money, but it’s more money than what I would make in Mexico,” Miguel said in Spanish.

Since the mayor’s plan was approved and the creation of the Minutemen Project, Miguel said people like himself have been treated like “less than a dog.”

Jose Reyes who lives in Santa Ana but has worked in Costa Mesa for 13 years, said he does not consider Miguel a criminal.

“A criminal is somebody who has killed someone or assaulted someone,” Reyes said. “He is working, contributing to the city.”