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Manassas Starts Over On 287(g) Program
By Greg L | 14 March 2007 | Illegal Aliens, Manassas City | 10 Comments
A day after the Herndon Town Council adopts it’s Memorandum of Agreement with the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Manassas Journal-Messenger is reporting that there’s been a hitch in the plan to develop a regional agreement with ICE that encompasses Manassas, Prince William County and the regional jail board. Prince William County approved going forward with negotiations with ICE on January 18th. Now more than a month later, we learn that regional agreements are not authorized, and each locality is required to execute their own agreement. Perhaps this wasn’t as important to whomever was working this issue as it clearly is to voters, as this detail could have been discovered in a five minute telephone call had anyone bothered to try. So now Manassas is starting negotiations over after having accomplished very little.
This might actually be a good thing. The resolution passed by the Manassas City Council last October specified clearly that if a regional agreement could not be reached, the city would move forward with it’s own MOA for the Manassas City Police Department and obtain training for regular police officers. While Chief Skinner thinks it’s a better idea for members of only the Gang Task Force and the Narcotics Task force to obtain the training, the specific direction of the council is otherwise, and Chief Skinner does not have the legal authority to modify the scope of the agreement being sought with ICE. Now control over this program is more likely to be firmly in the hands of the city council, which is absolutely more responsive to the desires of Manassas residents on this program than the Chief has proven himself to be.
Herndon’s solid and expansive MOA, which has already been vetted by ICE, is an easy model to duplicate, has passed in another local jurisdiction, and is entirely consistent with last year’s city council decision. I’m willing to wager that council members Marc Aveni and Andy Harrover will be favorable to using that MOA as a basis for the Section 287(g) program in Manassas, and would have a strong case to present to other members of the city council that this would be a smart course to take in getting this long-awaited program moving again. If the council takes back control over the process of negotiating this MOA and uses Herndon’s investment as a guide, we may finally see some concrete steps taken to control the problems associated with illegal immigration in Manassas.
Residents have been waiting too long already.
UPDATE: Andy Harrover has more on this here.
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It will never pass in the park. The powers that be won’t allow it. Won’t happen. They have been kissing illegal and Hispanic a$$ for years now and it won’t stop short of a forceful removal of all council members by the citizenship.
The Manassas Park City Council won’t even bring it up for a vote, and when questioned about their intentions on the issue lied to me saying they already were part of the program when they were not. The current regime in the park will do nothing about the problem.
If Manassas Park is ever going to get it’s act together, it’s clear that city voters are going to have to do what was done in Herndon — throw the bums out, and replace them with citizens who actually care about rescuing that city from the tidal wave of illegal aliens that have infested it.
Watch this space for an announcement about an organization called “Help Save Manassas”, and get your neighbors there so you can get started.
I bet that Manassas dropped the ball on purpose. Since Miller left for Richmond nobody was there to push it through.
“Since Miller left for Richmond nobody was there to push it through.”
Not so. Aveni and Harrover are supportive as well. I also have hopes for Mr. Way. Like Greg said, watch this blog for info regarding HSM. A friend attended their last meeting. She said that the “do’ers” in Manassas were there. This will be an effective group, once up and running.
I can’t speak for the other council members but my understanding of our ICE resolution was to get this done in the jail. If the jail failed to get the ICE MOU approved then the resolution allowed for the City itself to negotiate a MOU with ICE. I believe this to be an accurate understanding of the original resolution.
I’m going to get with the Chief of police this week hopefully (budget meetings are killing me) and gain a more precise understanding of what he’s up to. It seems that he wants some of our different task force officers to be ICE trained. If this is so, it seems like a good idea. Of course, it could also force the issue on adding more officers (which I would like to do) so we’ll have to figure it all out.
Nobody dropped the ball on purpose, this is just a very difficult time of year to do much of anything but the budget. We’ve had 30 hours of budget meetings in the last week and while that’s a lot of time for Council members it takes even more staff time to prepare it all.
On the plus side, the zoning enforcement initiative did pass last week.
One other thing: once I get a complete understanding of what we’re up to, I’ll update everyone. Monday’s council meeting was a bit hectic so I may have misunderstood what he was saying. Whatever we need to do to ensure the program gets going, I’ll support.
More than the Gang Taskforce officers need to be trained. It seems this would limit our police to a few, not the many criminal illegal aliens that reside in the city.
Herndons MOA was a well thought out document and included MANY crimes illegals could be deported for.
Herndon’s MOU is actually quite limited. Only 7 officers will be trained and the authority to investigate and arrest for immigration law violations is limited to situations in which immigration law enforcement is undertaken in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation into a specified class of state law crimes. The MOU does NOT authorize Herndon police to undertake investigation of civil or criminal immigration violations independent of other criminal investigations.
It’s limited to the same degree that the 287(g) program is limited to processing for deportation those who have been detained for committing serious crimes. I think Herndon is taking full advantage of the program in a way that should inspire other localities. The MOA gives the city good flexibility in how to implement the program and can easily be amended to expand it after they gain some experience with it.
One of the open items in the upcoming 2008 budget is to identify and include the cost of ICE training for Manassas police detectives and gang task force officers in the budget. I requested this during a recent budget working session because I feel we should go at least this far in addressing the worst part of the problem of illegal aliens, namely the suspected criminals.
I also pass on the following text as a matter of general interest. It comes from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (a state institution) which tries to attract businesses to Virginia. The same text has appeared in the last several of their annual brochures:
“The federal Immigration and Recorm Control Act of 1986 preempts state law governing the employment of illegal aliens. The Department of Labor and Industry no longer enforces laws pertaining to the hiring of an alien who cannot provide documents indicating that he or she is legally eligible for employment in the United States.”
With the feds preempting the problem and then doing nothing, and the state abdicating to the localities and the localities having precious little in the way of effective tools is it any wonder progress is slow?