Illegal Immigration: Someone Has to Step Up and Enforce the Law


By COREY STEWART | TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Published: August 11, 2010

Last month,
The Times-Dispatch said that "setting immigration policy is a federal job. Washington needs to shoulder the responsibility it has abdicated." I agree. However, protecting the lives of citizens is the duty of every level of government. The federal government has failed to protect citizens from illegal aliens who commit crimes. The federal government's failure, however, is no excuse for states and localities to abdicate our duties as well. That is the principal that guides the Virginia rule of law campaign.

Prince William County's rule of law policy, the original version of which was introduced by Supervisor John Stirrup in June 2007, mandates that every individual under custodial arrest, regardless of race or ethnicity, be checked for immigration status. Those checks resulted in 3,000 illegal aliens being handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation. But the real impact of Prince William's policy was not the immigration checks, but the message that it sent: If you are illegal, you would be wise to leave our community or, at least, stay out of trouble.

Both sides of the illegal-immigration debate agree on one thing: Illegal aliens began fleeing Prince William. And as they did, our violent crime rate plummeted 37 percent. Some call that a coincidence. I don't think so, and I am not alone. A survey conducted by the University of Virginia found that 80 percent of Prince William residents agree with the policy's implementation, and that 65 per cent of our 500 police officers have found it to be an effective tool to fight violent crime.

Although a tremendous success, our policy has two significant limitations. First, many illegal aliens who fled Prince William simply moved to Fairfax, Stafford, Loudoun, and other localities. It is for this reason that we have begun the Virginia rule of law campaign (www.VirginiaRuleOfLaw.com) to encourage the General Assembly to adopt a similar policy for the entire state. The draft legislation is intended to, as this paper advises, move beyond "grandstanding" and provide "more than slogans to sort such issues out."

There are also other ideas not present in the legislation that the campaign will vigorously support, and we will support any legislator who wishes to introduce this legislation, in whole or part. We wanted to start this conversation in Virginia, and we wanted to ensure that there was a robust public discussion.

A second limitation of our policy was tragically demonstrated by the killing of Sister Denise Mosier, allegedly by a two-time DUI convict and illegal alien, Carlos Martinelly Montano. Under Prince William's policy, Montano was identified as an illegal alien after his prior DUI conviction and held in jail until delivered into ICE custody. ICE then released him back into our community, even though he posed a clear threat to public safety.

Now let me be clear: Montano's release was no mistake by some low-level ICE official. He was released because it is the Obama administration's policy to release criminal illegal aliens back into our community rather than deporting them. Think about that. Also disturbing is Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's surprise that this twice-convicted illegal alien was released to repeat his crime. It is her department's policy to release illegal aliens instead of deporting them. Hundreds are released every day. That many of these criminals go out and commit more crimes should be of no surprise to anyone, especially Napolitano.

We do not know how many dangerous criminals have been released back into our community by federal officials. In the interest of public safety, we have asked for this information many times, but the Department of Homeland Security will not provide it. For this reason, we seek a congressional subpoena to compel the Obama administration to provide the identities of all criminal illegal aliens apprehended in Prince William who have been released, and what Virginia offenses they committed. There is no doubt that scale will be staggering, and the nature of their crimes will be chilling.

This is not a problem of protracted court battles, murky situations, or issues with due process. ICE is starved of basic resources and has woefully inadequate detention facility infrastructure.

As the Department of Justice expends taxpayer resources to persecute Arizona, the failure of the federal government to protect an innocent Virginian's life from a suspected drunk driver who should have been deported years earlier is even more insulting. It is appalling, and just plain sad, that the federal government actually admits it cannot deal with the problem in its lawsuit against Arizona.

This newspaper has called on conservatives to propose a solution to dealing with the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in this country. My answer is simple. We will get to that when the federal government shows itself more serious about doing its job than it is about suing us in federal court. Until then, responsible state and local leaders will do whatever they can to protect their citizens. I believe the next step to doing that is passing the Virginia Rule of Law Act.


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Corey Stewart is the chairman of the Board of Supervisors in Prince William. He can be reached at cstewart@pwcgov.org.

Editor's note: ICE contacted Chairman Stewart after he filed this column and indicated it would be releasing data to Prince William County government.

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