The candidates for Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors debated last night and immigration was topic #1:
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said yesterday that under no circumstances would he follow the lead of Prince William County and push for legislation to cut off services to illegal immigrants or authorize police to check the immigration status of suspects, measures he described as election season demagoguery.
“I can just tell you Fairfax County is not going to go the route of some of our neighbors,” Connolly, who is seeking a second term as chairman Nov. 6, said during a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors. “We’re not going to demagogue. We’re not going to essentially roll back the welcome mat. . . . That’s not why I ran for office and that isn’t who we are, and we’re not going to do that.”
Connolly’s Republican challenger, Gary H. Baise, said at the joint meeting that if elected he would push to enroll Fairfax police in a program run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that gives selected officers instant access to federal immigration data
(…)
Connolly cautioned that such an expansion would drive a dangerous wedge between police and immigrants — making them reluctant to cooperate with investigations — and heighten the danger of racial profiling by officers. He said Fairfax Police Chief David M. Rohrer would be reluctant to involve his officers.
“We need their cooperation for public safety and health,” Connolly said of immigrants.
To date, immigration, illegal or not, has not had the political impact in Fairfax that it has in Prince William and it seems unlikely that it will be enough to unseat Connolly this time around.
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
[...] H/T: Below The Beltway [...]