TACKLING THE FEDS: Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, is leading a charge to get info from the feds on the whereabouts of 7,000 illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in the county since 2008.
Virginia county takes on federal government that ‘refuses to do its job’
By Watchdog.org -- Kathryn Watson | Virginia Watchdog——Bio and Archives--July 11, 2014
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — For Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, the border crisis isn’t something far away — or something new.
This week, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted 5-1 to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act demanding to know the whereabouts of the roughly 7,000 illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, been arrested by county police and been placed in the hands of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement since 2008.
This isn’t the first attempt Stewart, a Republican, and his colleagues have made to get the federal government to remove individuals who are threatening and damaging their community.
In 2008, county police began asking the legal status of everyone arrested for a crime. When illegal immigrant Carlos Montano killed a nun in 2010 after being previously arrested for DUIs and released by ICE, county officials began to go after the feds with full force of the law.
“This is an unnecessary threat to public safety,” Stewart told Watchdog.org. “You’re never going to be able to get rid of all the criminals in the community. You can’t keep people in jail indefinitely. But when you have the option to remove someone who you know is dangerous, it’s an unnecessary risk to public safety and it’s just because the federal government refuses to do its job.”
Wondering how widespread ICE’s failure to deport dangerous illegal immigrants is, county officials requested the whereabouts of those roughly 3,000 arrested illegal immigrants. When they were turned down, the county took the feds to court in 2011 — and lost. The federal judge said they hadn’t taken every possible administrative step to get the information.
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