(February 26, 2006) Costa Mesa's Minuteman Mayor, Allan Mansoor, says that having police officers determine the immigration status of suspected “criminal aliens” won't result in racial profiling or “sweeps.” His only intention is to protect all residents from crime, he says, adding that only people who commit “serious” crime will be targeted.
But can the Mayor and Costa Mesa police be trusted?
When speaking at a recent meeting of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform (a Neo-Fascist/Nativist hate group), where he happily accepted his honorary membership to the Minuteman Project (also a Neo-Fascist/Nativist hate group), the Mayor indicated that he had accepted a less “comprehensive” version of his own original proposal to ensure its passage, but he agreed that police officers should be allowed to stop any person and ask for proof of legal residency, a practice that would lead to the racial profiling and mass sweeps that he now says are not intended.
And in the city of Orange, police arrested eight day laborers on February 25 at a Home Depot. The eight were immediately taken to a detention center to be deported later, not for committing a serious crime, but for looking for work—like thousands of other Mexican and Central-American immigrants do everyday in Orange county. Costa Mesa's plan would make it even easier to target immigrants. If Orange police deport immigrants for seeking work, why shouldn't Costa Mesa's immigrant population fear its own police?
Whatever the Mayor's intentions, it's unlikely that anyone outside of a small group of ambitious local candidates for election or reelection, including the Mayor (Janet Nguyen of Garden Grove, Mike McGill of Cypress, Diane Hartke of Corona Del Mar and Sheriff Juan Corona are four others) are going to benefit from the crackdown on immigrants currently going on in Costa Mesa.
Immigrants who landed in Costa Mesa, most from Mexico and Central America, and who make up over 30 percent of the city's population of more than 108,000, have already suffered from attacks on their right to play soccer as well as closure of the Human Relations Committee, which promoted tolerance and diversity, and the Day Labor Center, which provided jobs. Not to mention the appointment of a writer of Neo-Nazi hate literature to a citizens board that advises the city council on economic and social issues. And next (the city's plan will take several months to finalize), they will have to worry about police who might report them to La Migra for deportation.
Much of this was done at the hands of Mayor Mansoor and his two city council compadres, Eric Bever and Gary Monahan. Together they make up the majority body of the five member city council. Immigrants' rights aside, which is where they are put in Costa Mesa these days, will the Minuteman junta's ongoing attempt to weed out brown colored immigrants from the city make it a better place to live, or is it a ticking time bomb that has already started to explode in the city’s face?
Read more at:
http://www.ocorganizer.com/html/city_council.html