I was asked to provide a presentation to the Immigration Committee of the Prince William County Human Rights Commission this evening on behalf of Help Save Manassas, and took the opportunity to point out procedural problems with these hearings, the utter lack of statutory authority the commission has to conduct these hearings, and the fanciful and outlandish testimony the commission is eliciting. It was an interesting evening.
Immediately after the Prince William County Board of Supervisors adopted Supervisor Stirrup’s resolution on July 10th, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras and their subsidiary the Woodbridge Worker’s Committee requested that the Human Rights Commission immediately commence hearings regarding the resolution, and the American Civil Liberties Union immediately followed with a request that the Commission “oppose” this resolution. Six days later these hearings started with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund leading off with wacky testimony speculating all sorts of doom-and-gloom scenarios that would result from this resolution. No public notice was given for these hearings, and only leftist organizations were initially invited to participate.
Rather than actually participate in what was clearly a rigged debate, Greg’s group took a different, and, I think, better, route and challenged the authority of the commission to even examine this issue:
The Human Rights Commission does not have the statutory authority to provide judicial review over legislative actions by the Board of County Supervisors. The law authorizing this commission charges it with evaluating claims of unlawful discrimination in Prince William County, of which there are precisely zero allegations. Illegal aliens are not a protected class under federal, state or local laws, which makes inquiries into the conduct of county agencies in this regard beyond the legal authority of the commission. To the extent that unlawful discrimination might be discussed, such instances are wild speculation about an implementation plan that hasn’t even been established yet.
Exactly.
There may well be legal arguments against the immigration plan that Prince William County is about to implement, but those arguments belong before a judge, not before an unappointed, unelected panel of obviously biased political activists.
Further details about the over-reaches by the PWC Human Rights Commission can be found here
Update: Greg has more information
Help Save Manassas has learned that the hearings currently underway by the Prince William County Human Rights Commission regarding the resolution adopted by the Board of County Supervisors on July 10th were commenced not as the response to a complaint alleging unlawful discrimination, as the statute governing this commission would require, but because Mexicanos Sin Fronteras asked for it. Chairman of the Commission Curtis Porter, who denied that these hearings were even hearings, also denied that the commission was responding to any third party request. Seeing that Curtis Porter provided multiple incompatible rationales during last evening’s meeting of the Immigration Committee, how likely is it that we’re not getting the real story about why this unlawful hearing is being conducted?
In other words, the hearings themselves have no legal basis. Obviously, there’s alot more to this story than we’re being told right now.
