A town-hall-style meeting Tuesday night about a proposed de facto day-labor work center in Centreville was expected to be fiery.
It wasn’t just fiery. It got ugly.
The two-hour-long meeting was organized by Fairfax County Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) to gather community opinion about a planned day-labor center — privately funded and staffed by church volunteers — at the Centreville Square Shopping Center. Nonprofits and church groups have said a work center could address concerns from stores and neighbors, who say the bands of Guatemalan immigrants who look for work near shops and the nearby public library are intimidating and a nuisance.
At several points, many in the crowd of at least 300 in the cafeteria of Centreville’s Centre Ridge Elementary School snickered, sneered and yelled at each other and at Frey, who moderated the forum.
One man yelled, “You lie!” at Frey when he began speaking about Fairfax County’s partnership with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail programs. At another point, a shouting match erupted between a speaker and Frey, a moderate Republican who has represented the Sully section of Fairfax County since the district was created in 1991.
“I’m not going to claim this is an end-all,” Frey said. “Do people feel like moving the workers to a location that’s less visible and less prominent, where it could be controlled? Does it make it better?”
The question was met with a chorus of boos.
Way to problem solve. NOT! This is the very kind of behavior that ‘howlings has been disdainful of–thug mentality. Where was the discussion? Where was the listening? Where was the courtesy?
Obviously there is a problem with day laborers in Centreville. If a group is willing to assume responsibility for managing the problem, then why not at least hear them out. It seems better to do something rather than nothing. It seems better to listen and to try new things rather than to just sit around and bitch, piss and moan about something one has very little control over.
Hats off to Michael Frey for looking for solutions to a thorny problem. Lastly, it is hard to respect any opinion when the delivery system is a series of boos and hisses. Intimidation is a bad form of government.
Full story in the Washington Post
[After looking at some footage provided by Rick, perhaps all conversation was not stomped out. I will reserve judgement on what was said in the post until someone sees a video of the the entire town meeting.]
A real leader has absolutely no powers in the deportation department. Only a federal judge can deport.
So, it all comes back to being a federal issue. If they are the only ones with the legal authority to make it happen, then that is the real deal breaker. So saying it is a federal problem suddenly becomes the reality. Something like 10% of those run in by ICE are ever deported.
It seems to me that if things are really as bad at that shopping center as some made it out to me (and I often go there because I hate the mall and haven’t witnessed that many day laborers) then the owners of the shopping center in addition to his/her tennants need to bring in the cops and the feds and the congressmen and anyone else who will listen and go to town on them.
No talk of that happening so its all just posturing. Might as well let the Methodists or the Presbyterians try to manage things.
Well you heard the owner say that there is a way forward for him, but it involves armed guards hanging around an ice cream store.
Why is it that Frey couldn’t lift a finger here to try to get ICE’s attention? Too busy doing other very important things to care about thugs here illegally intimidating a buisness owner?
You accept that? You want to erect a trailer and to let that particular thug hang out there?
You have really given up any hope of ever preventing loitering? You think it’s beyond us as Americans?
Hey, there’s a rapist in my neighborhood who has threatened to assault my wife. Better build him a trailer so I don’t have to look at him while he does it. it’ll be better for her privacy too; he won’t have to rape her in broad daylight or out in the woods.
Hey, there are some kids making noise in my neighborhood, very rowdy. Better build them a trailer too.
And the next time a bum asks me for change, know what I’m going to do? That’s right. I’m going to build him a trailer.
Nothing says let’s stop illegal immigration quite like a free trailer does. Was it not Jesus Christ who said turn the other cheek, then turn it again, and then build trailers for men from other lands. Render unto Ceasar … a trailer! Movest thou the men from other lands out of the sight of the masses, that they may profit and multiply in the shade and not before the eyes of the people.
Render unto ceasar the taxes, unless of course you are Latino and speak no English, then the Lord will protect you from Ceasar’s laws. The lord will send you an army of lawyers and doo-gooders who will protect thee from the laws of the land, and will shephard thee through the valley of El Diablo.
Rick, having been pressed into a year long federal duty, I can tell you that ICE would be totally overwhelmed if they had to deport everyone picked up for a minor infraction. It isn’t unusual for a person picked up for a felony to have several illegal entries into this country. I think most of us are interested in prioritizing ICE’s workload – starting with drug running, ID theft, gang related crimes, murder, etc. We don’t have an unlimited number of agents out there.
Didn’t the Baskin-Robins guy say that his customers who left had already made their purchase? If so, he didn’t lose money on that transaction though they may be scared to return. I think a call to the police about the guy’s drunken behavior should have been the proper course of action. If the police didn’t tell him about the man’s legal status, he’s just making an assumption.
Actually we don’t know what Frey has done to alleviate the problem. How about that other guy, the opportunist, who showed up at the meeting to be Mr. Tough on Immigration.
Rick, I understand your stance on illegal immigration. I still don’t know how you are able to tell. Loitering by day laborers is a problem near the library. I have never noticed it any place else but that is not to say it isn’t happening.
The loitering needs to not happen at the library. If it takes a trailer some place else to move the day laborers, so be it. The way I see it, the laborers can have a trailer at church expense or a library at tax payer expense. This isn’t a new problem. It has been going on for years. Wishing it away isn’t working.
“We don’t have an unlimited number of agents out there.”
ICE needs more agents. And leaders who aren’t political hacks. We as a people need to insist that they do their job. At least to the point that if some previously-deported thug is harassing American families and business owners, that they can deport him (again).
“Didn’t the Baskin-Robins guy say that his customers who left had already made their purchase? If so, he didn’t lose money on that transaction though they may be scared to return. ”
DUH. When you take your child out for ice cream, you usually prefer to do it somewhere you won’t be harassed by drunks.
I guarantee you that if I were the Baskin Robbins owner, I would have paid someone not only to monitor, but also to pistol-whip the guy.
“Actually we don’t know what Frey has done to alleviate the problem. ”
If his current best plan is to give these guys a nice comfortable home base for illegal activities, something tells me that Frey lacks the brains, balls, and initiative to have done much before this “plan”.
Rick, is Herndon better or worse off without the center it had for day laborers? Skip the spiel that we’d be better off if all of them were deported. That’s not going to happen. Is the town better off with their being on the streets or 7-11 or with their having a center for a focal point.
DUH. When you take your child out for ice cream, you usually prefer to do it somewhere you won’t be harassed by drunks.
Some people feel the same way about their children being exposed to guys wearing guns at the local pizza parlor. Or swearing by teenagers. It’s one of those unpleasant public situations with which you’re stuck occasionally.
I’m going to assume you mean the leaders aren’t doing their job and not the ICE agents whom I’m sure carry a heavy workload.
If the main gripe is public loitering near the library and around the nearby shopping center, then the logical solution seems to be to find a central location that would take those guys away from the more public area. It sounded as though some of the meeting’s attendees were more interested in deporting them than solving the problem that immediately affects them. Mass deportation isn’t going to happen.
Did speakers have to note their magisterial district? What percent of the audience was composed of PWC or LoCo outside agitators? How many were from the Sully District?
I don’t think they had to note it, Censored. I am with you. If there is a loitering problem, move the loiterers to another location. Makes sense to me. Or I can sit there and wish they were all deported which isn’t going to happen. There simply isn’t money or time or stomach for such actions to happen on a wide scale basis.
There is time and money, but no stomach. This country has done it before.
If they build a center, make it official. One registers, provides id, and waits. Either for work or ICE.
Of course, I realize that it would never be built and used that way. So, do we just erase our border and make Mexico our 51st state or a federation like Europe. We have to start somewhere. Why not go the route of Arizona? Or, for that matter, allow local enforcement to arrest illegal aliens for trespassing and hold them until deported. Or moved to a sanctuary city. Their choice.
ICE cannot handle all illegal immigration.
As many here on this blog are not willing to say WBC speech must be curbed, I am not willing to say that people in this country can be stopped and questioned because they look or sound like illegal immigrants. Not sure how one looks or sounds like an illegal immigrant either.
I guess its where each of us is willing to curb American freedoms.
“Rick, is Herndon better or worse off without the center it had for day laborers?”
Much better off. With that center, it would start to resemble parts of Maryland where illegal immigrants not only are there, but stream in at greater and greater rates.
My friends who live in Herndon don’t agree, Rick. They are back to having to weave their way into the 7-11.
I guess that leaves us with defining ‘better off.’
You know,I am not for supporting the illegal masses find employment, but if this is a private venture who is funding the efforts and such…and not government…I may not like it, but I don’t have to fund it….and neither does anyone who opposes their actions.
Right but we the people could :
A. Vote Frey out of office ASAP
B. Boycott Dwoskin’s properties
Whoever belongs to the church that is involved with the “Centreville Immigration Forum” or whatever should boycott it.