Jail remodeling may compromise ICE work

Suspects whom the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent at Costa Mesa jail might normally detain may be slipping through the cracks since the jail’s been shut down for remodeling, police officials said Friday.

Since mid-December, Costa Mesa’s jail has been shut down from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday for construction, officials said. On Jan. 27, the police department decided to close it altogether to accelerate its remodeling, Sgt. Mark Manley said. All the while the jail’s ICE agent, who is responsible for screening prisoners for potential immigration violations, has been phoning it in, Manley said.

People arrested in Costa Mesa have been diverted to either Orange County jail or to Newport Beach, police said.

About 70% of the people arrested in Costa Mesa are sent to county jail, where Manley said there is a “cadre of deputies” trained in immigration enforcement, mitigating any loss in enforcement, officials said.

“We try to only book people [in Newport Beach] that we feel can be released eventually,” Manley said. “We told Newport we wanted to minimize the impact on them.”

Costa Mesa police do the preliminary steps to booking at the station, and from there send them to either Santa Ana or Newport Beach, Lt. Allen Huggins said. It’s hard to pin down who may be falling through the cracks because they’re not booked in Costa Mesa, Lt. Tim Schennum said. It’s also been a slow month for arrests overall, he said. Normally about 40 people are detained for immigration violations monthly, but Costa Mesa had 13 in January.

“There’s millions slipping through the cracks already. We’re doing what we can in Costa Mesa,” Councilman Allan Mansoor said. “It really is up to other cities to do their part. It’s up to the federal government to do their part.”

The jail should be up and running by the last week of February at the latest, authorities said. In the meantime, public officials have accepted that there’s little they can change about the situation.

“It does concern me that we’re not able to fully uphold the law, but I do understand that we do have a necessity to update our police facility,” Mayor Eric Bever said. “That being the case, we’ll have to accept the situation. That’s basically the reality of it, and we’ll have to deal with it.”

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.