EDITORIAL:Jail screening results impressive

When the Costa Mesa City Council last year embarked on its immigration enforcement plan, one of our chief concerns was how that would tax the city’s police department.

We envisioned police officers used as border patrol agents at the expense of fighting other instances of crime, and, even worse, police officers who would no longer be seen by crime victims as protectors but as people to fear.

The addition of a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the city jail has changed all of that and lessened our fears.

While the council majority, led by Allan Mansoor, certainly can be credited for bringing the illegal immigration issue to the forefront, the program in place now is not the same program the council originally conceived, which would have only targeted those arrested for felonies.

Instead, police officers are simply doing the job they have always done, and the federal immigration agents take it from there.

And those agents screen all arrestees who are unable to produce citizenship paperwork, regardless of the crime. Those arrestees who can’t prove citizenship will face deportation.

The results have been largely positive. In January alone, 57 people were detained by the immigration officer. Of those, 26 were held for misdemeanors, 19 for felonies and 11 had previous arrest warrants.

Of those felonies, the crimes ran the gamut from strong-arm robbery to drug possession and auto theft.

There were a few picked up on minor infractions, like jaywalking or riding a bike on the wrong side of the street, but Costa Mesa police insist those instances will be rare. And we urge law enforcement officials to avoid any appearance of ethnic profiling that would bring negative scrutiny on the city and the department.

Still, we are encouraged by several things.

Ridding the city of criminals is in the best interest of everyone, as is keeping immigration enforcement in federal hands.

While it is unfortunate that some will be snared for something as minor as jaywalking, the law is the law when it comes to illegal immigration, and we, after all, are a nation of laws.

Those here illegally should take heed that immigration enforcement is now an extension of crime enforcement in Costa Mesa’s jail. If, in the future, there are less criminals in this community and this nation than there are now as a result of this immigration enforcement, who will be able to argue with those results?

We sure won’t.