Thread: VA: Herndon Gears Up For A Battle

Herndon Gears Up For A Battle
By Greg L | 3 April 2008 | Fairfax County | 147 Comments

It’s four square miles, has 25,000 residents, and would be a somewhat unremarkable jurisdiction had it not become the first Virginia jurisdiction to face the tsunami of illegal immigrants that later crashed into Manassas, Manassas Park and Prince William County, thus becoming ground zero for the opening salvo in Northern Virginia’s battle to rescue our communities from the scourge of illegal immigration. That battle continues in Herndon between the forces that want to make it a sanctuary for illegal immigration and those that want to enforce the rule of law.

In September of 2005, over the strenuous objections of the citizens of Herndon, the O’Reilly-Bruce town council approved the creation of a taxpayer-funded illegal immigrant hiring site on town-owned property. The citizens were outraged, and in May 2006 the voters threw out the mayor and council members that supported the hiring site. In their place they elected a new mayor and five council members that would enforce the rule of law.

What Herndon’s new mayor and council have accomplished in the last twenty months is absolutely phenomenal and should serve as a shining example of what committed elected officials can do to protect their community from the illegal immigrant invasion. Herndon became the first town in the United States to get their police officers trained to enforce federal immigration law under the 287(g) program, required business license applicants to certify that they are legally present in the U.S. and required town vendors to certify that illegal immigrants will not work on town contracts, and managed to get the publicly-funded day laborer center which was attracting ever more illegal aliens to the town shut down. Residential overcrowding and illegal boarding houses have been reduced by two-thirds, day laborers no longer plague the commercial district, and the quality of life in Herndon has been largely restored to what it had been. Not a bad record for a group of elected officials that their adversaries claimed would fail miserably because of their inexperience.

In May of this year the citizens of Herndon get a chance to confirm that Herndon must not return to being a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. The ballot for the Herndon election has three people running for mayor and ten people running for town council seats. The mayoral candidates are the incumbent Steve DeBenedittis, Harlon Reece a supporter of illegal immigrants and the taxpayer funded hiring site and Jazbender Singh, an advocate for removing all controls on businesses and developers.

The candidates for town council seats break down into three distinct groups. The first group supports illegal immigrants and re-establishing the taxpayer funded hiring site but their real motivation for running is to increase the value of the property they own in downtown Herndon. Richard Downer and Arthur Nachman stand to profit handsomely if they can vote to maximize development density in Herndon’s downtown.

Downer (or his immediate family) owns a property on Pine Street and Nachman owns a larger property on Lynn Street and a property at the corner of Lynn and Station Street. They both stand to quadruple the value of their properties if a proposed 4-5 story hotel is approved at the corner of Monrow and Elden Street. JPI Incorporated has proposed a redevelopment of the downtown that includes 600 condominiums, 70,000 square feet of retail, a 600+ space parking garage and a 250 seat theater. This “project maximoâ€

I wish I still lived in Herndon so I could vote in this election. I do know the residents of Herndon were very happy when the day labor site was shut down. With all the Mayor and council have accomplished, I'm very sure the people of Herndon will be glad to keep them in office. Good luck Mayor!