Federal checks begin

COSTA MESA — Angel Garcia has worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement for four years, but on Monday he reported to work for the first time in a new location: the Costa Mesa jail.

Garcia is the first immigration agent to work full-time at a Southern California city jail at least since 2003, when the federal agency that handles immigration was reorganized, officials said Tuesday in interviews at the Costa Mesa jail.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s offer to place an agent in Costa Mesa came in November, nearly a year after the City Council voted to have city police trained to do immigration checks, and weeks after a contentious council election in which illegal immigration was the key issue.

City officials accepted the offer last week, and Garcia started work Monday.

Federal officials have said their goal is to interview everyone booked at the city jail, about 500 people a month, to make sure they’re in the country legally. Garcia began interviews right away, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials declined to say how many people he has checked.

Here’s how it works: People are arrested on suspicion of a misdemeanor or felony and brought to the city jail. During the booking process, Garcia works alongside Costa Mesa police to interview the suspects, and they’re found to be in the U.S. illegally, federal officials would begin the procedures to deport them after they go through the justice system here.

If convicted, they serve their time in a U.S. jail before being turned over to federal immigration authorities for deportation.

“I ask them first where they were born,” Garcia said. “If they say they were born in another country, I ask them what they’re doing in the United States, do they have paperwork to be in the United States.”

Not everyone tells the truth, of course, but Garcia said he is trained to observe people’s body language to see if they’re lying. Sometimes they have fake documents, but he can check federal databases to verify Social Security numbers, for example. He knows some Spanish, enough to interview Spanish speakers, he said.

The interview takes about 30 minutes, Garcia said.

But that 30 minutes makes all the difference to some people in Costa Mesa. In late 2005, Mayor Allan Mansoor proposed that the city pursue federal training so police could enforce immigration law, a plan that sparked vigorous debate but never went forward.

The arrangement that placed Garcia in the city jail seems to have put to rest the plan for city enforcement. And at the moment, it’s unique, though federal officials took pains to indicate this isn’t the first time it’s ever been done.

Jim Hayes, Los Angeles field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency has devoted staffers part-time to the Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Anaheim and Santa Ana city jails, but no other city in Southern California has a full-time federal immigration agent right now.

Hayes, who took his post in August, said he wants to cooperate with more local law enforcement agencies and will reach out to them over the next few months.

He started in Costa Mesa because officials here were interested, he said. “In order to form a partnership, there have to be two willing partners,” he said.

Hayes said it’s too early to say how many people might be deported as a result of immigration checks in Costa Mesa. But, he said, it’s a good solution to the city’s concerns.

“I think it gets to the heart of the problem,” he said. “Immigration is a very polarizing issue. The community is divided over whether they want their law enforcement enforcing immigration.”

Costa Mesa police are happy with the arrangement, Lt. Allen Huggins said.

“It basically allows us to not have to be concerned about our manpower,” while if officers were getting federal training, they’d be off the job for several weeks, Huggins said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement “will be doing their job, and us as local law enforcement will be doing our job, which is public safety first,” he said.