Messages to Virginia Beach show a public seared after girls' deaths
By DEIRDRE FERNANDES, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 5, 2007
Last updated: 11:57 PM


VIRGINIA BEACH - A few days after two teens died in a car crash, Virginia Beach Convention Center employees arrived at work to find fliers taped to the building.

"Why spend your spring break in Cancun... when you can get run over by a drunk Mexican right here in Virginia Beach?"

The fliers, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, are just one example of how the wreck swept the city into the national debate about illegal immigration and exposed anger about the issue.

People e-mailed city officials with suspicions that certain restaurants hired undocumented immigrants or particular thrift stores catered to them. A police officer passed on a tip to his chief that a dozen construction workers who did not speak English were working on an Oceanfront stage.

One person advised city leaders to set up a police checkpoint south of Pungo to catch undocumented workers.

Even fliers advertising a rally to protest the Iraq war and President Bush got authorities' attention. Police called the Hampton Roads Peace and Justice Coalition to make sure that an April 28 gathering was not an anti-immigration event and that it had nothing to do with impeaching the mayor.

Talk show host Bill O'Reilly blamed Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf for the city's old policy to ask about immigration status only if somebody was charged with a felony. Earlier this week, Police Chief Jake Jacocks Jr. announced that his officers would ask all people they arrest who are from another country about their immigration status, even in misdemeanor cases.

But Oberndorf became the public face of the city's position. S he received angry - and sometimes profane - e-mails from people in Hampton Roads and across the country.

"How does it feel to know there are two beautiful teen aged girls dead because of you and those who you control?" a Virginia Beach resident asked in an e-mail he sent April 4.

Scott Rigell said he rarely writes to government officials but the deaths of Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, spurred him to type up a page-long plea to the mayor and City Council members on April 11.

"Local government now has to pro-actively assist and cooperate with the federal government if we are to gain control of our borders," he wrote.

Rigell, a father of three daughters, said he opposes illegal immigration but thinks America should increase the number of foreigners it allows into the country legally.

"I identified with the two families who lost children," Rigell said. "Immigration wasn't an issue here like it was in the border towns, in those towns it's up front and center. But now, yes it is a pressing matter here."

But other correspondents symp athized with the city.

"The real cause of the incident was an individual who decided to drink - and then operate a vehicle," one Virginia Beach resident wrote on April 6. "The fact that he was here illegally is not the real issue on this tragic incident."

Still, the anger this case sparked, especially among local residents, surprised some.

"I think I was a little taken aback," Ron Kuhlman, the city's director of tourism, marketing and sales, said about seeing the fliers at the convention center. "It was pretty charged then."

Tourism officials received more than 50 e-mails, many of them from people who said they were canceling their trips.

Mavel Velasco-Mu?oz, a professor at Virginia Wesleyan College who has lived in Virginia Beach for 20 years, said she fears local residents will see all immigrants, legal or not, the same way.

"I'm surprised at the hostility," Velasco-Mu?oz said. "I never thought immigration was a problem here.... We want to be part of the community, and we thought we were."

Jacocks said he hopes his decision to change the city's policy will have a calming effect.

"From my view the issue is settled," he said.

Others aren't as confident.

Oberndorf has spoken only sporadically about the issue and still refuses to call O'Reilly by name. She said she supports the chief's decision but that the city shouldn't be unfriendly to immigrants who are residents, especially as it looks to attract overseas businesses.

"I don't want to give anyone any leeway to do anything illegal," Oberndorf said. "But I don't want for this to be so inflamed that people will turn on each other because of the actions of a few."


Reach Deirdre Fernandesat (757) 222-5121 or deirdre.fernandes@pilotonline.com.


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