Anti-BVBL

In Chief Deane’s immigration resolution status report, after six months of madness in the county, the infamous and costly “crackdown on illegal immigration” has netted 626 arrests and summons of undocumented immigrants, 1.6% of all summons and arrests in the county. This 1.6% comes with the price of 11.3 million dollars. And out of 626, only 341 arrests were made and a handful proved to be legal residents mistakenly detained. See Washington Post Article.

The rabid supporters of the “crackdown” will no doubt say that that price tag is worth it to arrest 341 “illegals.” We can argue about the value of that ad nauseum, but there is a very serious logistical problem that is the real story in the report. It’s not reported in Kristen’s article and I’m sure Corey would like to gloss over this, but Marty pounced on it during session.

Corporal Pete Meletis reports that he has no idea what happens to those detainees who are released to ICE. There is no tracking done. Even ICE doesn’t know. The detainees are sent to various detentions centers and no one knows what happens to them. In fact, Pete Meletis said that they have discovered that in examining the results of the 287(g) Program between July 2007 - August 2008, out of 907 detainers released to ICE, 48 were not only back in the county but rearrested. 48 out of 907 were rearrested in the county! Is ICE just turning around and releasing everyone? It sure looks that way to me.

Here is the reality. There is a terrible cycle to detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants and we only have control over one half of that cycle. No matter how much money we spend, how well crafted it is, if we are blind to what is happening to the other half of the cycle, it’s a pointless exercise. We are baking one half of a pie totally blind to how the other half of the pie is being baked. Unless there is divine intervention, we’re going to end up with a really bad pie.

Until the other half of the cycle is fixed and transparent, we are just wasting money, time and resources. We are pouring our money into a bottomless pit. We must face reality, ICE and federal immigration laws have to get fixed, otherwise it is wasteful and counter productive to do anything at the local level.

“Cracking down” at the local level achieved NOTHING to resolve the immigration crisis. It only achieved one thing: create a social climate in which residents are divided and Hispanics and other minorities feel unwelcome. All for the bargain price of 11.3 million dollars that tax payers have to pay in exchange for a weakened economy, an overburdened police force, and a reputation for intolerance.

We have prioritized this useless crackdown over our seniors and children. This is just bad government and it must stop. We just can’t continue down this road.

Unfortunately, the county’s strategic planning task force will be full of politically motivated appointments by John Stirrup and Corey Stewart that includes Robert “foreign invasion” Duecaster and other faces from the county anti-immigrant lobby. There is no end in sight to this policy misguidance. Citizens must step up and regain control of our government, now infiltrated by the nativist hate group.

There is so much more in the report that we must analyze. We’ll continue to analyze and post another thread shortly.

Stewart claims $3 million in an $850 million budget is not significant. Excuse me, wasn’t that the initial costs that the County identified as being attributable to illegal aliens? How could it be significant in one instance but insignificant in the other?

And what is it with Stirrup and this point of order?

Here we go again. Honestly, it’s difficult to comprehend this type of management style. But for those that don’t know, it appears Corey’s looking for another spectacle on Tuesday. Here’s the email blast he sent out to everyone and their brother.

This morning in today’s Washington Post, one of my fellow supervisors, Woodbridge Supervisor Frank Principi, proposed repealing the cracking down on illegal immigration. Please email Supervisor Principi and the whole Board at BOCS@pwcgov.org and ask them to continue the crackdown. The vote to fund the resolution will be next Tuesday, April 29, at 2:00 p.m. at the McCoart building at 1 County Complex, Woodbridge, VA 22192. I know it may be inconvenient, but please try to attend and ask others to attend as well. Everyone will have 3 minutes to speak.

– Corey

Guess we should be glad that he’s not spending the $30,000 on the postcards this time.

Chairman Stewart should just listen to the business owners that have been lining up at Citizens Time, look at the housing market, recognize the source of the resolution, view the budget constraints, pay attention to the economist, think for yourself and stop following the know-nothing that will eventually get himself thrown out of the Republican party. Distance yourself from him, distance yourself from FAIR, and distance yourself from this non-sense about filling out pieces of papers to send to a government agency that will not do anything with them.  Chairman Stewart, focus on the jails so that felons don’t continue to slip through the cracks and be released back onto the street. Keep the tax rate low so that another 18 million dollars are cut from the school budget. Get rid of the part of the resolution that surely will attract litigation and put the county into a situation of having to spend money we don’t have to defend it.  Then get back to our county business, by healing the wounds and working together to attract businesses and home buyers to our community.

Supervisors had a late night budget cutting session that netted approximately 6.7 million savings in the first year but many of the cuts were one year suspension of services that don’t yield much savings in the 5 year plan.  In terms of ‘illegal immigration’ the additional police staffing of 6 officers and 1 support staff civilian that were requested were removed; however Chairman Stewart made it clear that it does not mean that officers will not be perfoming those duties.  Interestingly, Chief Deane pointed out that if we were to be competitive with some surrounding jurisdictions we would be looking at hiring 100-200 officers instead of the 36 that he initially requested.  Also, the cameras for the police cruisers have at least temporarily been removed.  If staff determines the cameras are required to mitigate liabilities resulting from a lawsuit they can be reintroduced.  Still on the table for possible reductions are 85 County employees layoffs which could account for another 5 million.  The end result being a 5% increase for residential properties & a 28.6% increase on the average commercial tax bill.