Below The Beltway

In an not entirely surprising development, a “civil rights” organization has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging Prince William County’s ordinance against illegal immigrants:

Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit yesterday targeting Prince William County’s closely watched crackdown on illegal immigration, arguing that a measure ordering police to check the immigration status of people in custody violates federal law.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, asks a judge to declare unconstitutional a controversial resolution that the Prince William supervisors passed in July. Before the largest crowd to attend a board meeting in two decades, the supervisors heightened immigration enforcement by local police and attempted to curb public services for illegal immigrants.

Although the enforcement efforts have not taken effect and supervisors have thus far declined to fund them, plaintiffs said yesterday that the resolution is having a dramatic effect throughout the county. The lawsuit was filed by a Washington law firm and two civil rights organizations on behalf of 22 plaintiffs. It names the county, the Prince William police chief, the county executive and the members of the board.

“This is instilling fear, it’s causing racial divisions and it’s making our community a place that is uninhabitable for people of color,” said Nancy Lyall, a spokeswoman for the Woodbridge Workers Committee, one of the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs and their attorneys said the resolution has heightened discrimination against Hispanics and other immigrants.

Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the Board of County Supervisors, said the resolution was “crafted very carefully, and we are confident it will withstand this and any other legal challenge.” He accused the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit, of threatening county officials with a legal challenge before the resolution was passed.

“They are trying to intimidate the county from upholding the law, and I am not going to back down from those threats,” Stewart (R-At Large) said. “No one is going to threaten Prince William County and get us to back down from doing the right thing.”

Prince William Police Chief Charlie T. Deane and County Executive Craig S. Gerhart declined to comment.

Without seeing the Complaint, and watching this case as it makes its way through the Court, it’s hard to comment on the merits of the lawsuit itself. Is this another Hazleton ? Only time will tell.