Nineteen-year-old Paula Garcia Gonzalez said her little sister asks every time they leave the house if ICE agents will be around.
“If she sees one passing by, she’ll tell us to hurry up so they don’t see us,” Gonzalez told the Stafford County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday night. “Can you imagine a child, your child, having to carry that fear around every time they walk out the doors? Is that the kind of community you, as a board of supervisors, want Stafford to become?”
The Aquia District resident was one of a dozen speakers who asked the supervisors to take a stand against the possibility of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility coming to the county.
The issue came up after a news story last year said Stafford was being considered as the location of a federal detention facility, but county officials have since said the locality is not being evaluated as such.
Concerned Fredericksburg-area residents, however, formed a group called Stafford for Humanity that demonstrated outside the Stafford Government Center before Tuesday’s meeting and then spoke during public comment time. Many of them were wearing white T-shirts with the message “ICE OUT.”
Cliff Heinzer, who leads Stafford for Humanity, told the supervisors that the best way to prevent the federal government from selecting Stafford for a facility is to act and speak out early.
That may not sway the Department of Homeland Security, but it could influence the owners of potential detention center sites.
“The effect is that the owners — not DHS, but the owners — worry about reputational damage, and they back off,” said Heinzer, a former Democratic congressional candidate who lives in the Aquia District.
Other speakers included Jennifer and Michael Lombardo, Navy veterans who live in the Falmouth District.
Michael Lombardo, a Naval Academy graduate who has seen combat, urged the supervisors to remain on guard despite the notion that an ICE facility isn’t supposedly planned for now.
It’s “great news,” he said, that the board believes that a detention center is not coming “at this point in time.”
“However, I think we all have to admit that, if you look at the history of the last six months, transparency has not exactly been the credo of the federal government,” Lombardo said.
Garrisonville District Supervisor Pamela Yeung also presented a resolution to her colleagues that would have said the board doesn’t support policies or facilities that “dehumanize” people.
“This is for our people,” she said, “those individuals that are scared to come to school, or to go to work.”
Yeung, though, was unable to secure the support of a majority of her colleagues to get the resolution considered for a vote at a future meeting.
Rock Hill District Supervisor Crystal Vanuch said some of her peers bringing up the ICE rumor is “stirring the pot” and distracting the community.
“There is no ICE facility coming to Stafford,” she said.
Even board Chairman Deuntay Diggs, who has said he’s personally against an ICE center, indicated he didn’t want to pursue a resolution.
“If it comes to Stafford, we will deal with it,” Diggs told the audience at the meeting. “And we will, you know, as we talk about being proactive, we have the proactive measures in place in terms of our staff making sure that they’re looking at what’s coming in and making sure that we’re taking the steps to be able to notify you.”
Mixed reviews on state legislation
Also Tuesday, the supervisors received a report from Lauren Gilbert, the county’s lobbyist in Richmond, on this year’s recently adjourned Virginia General Assembly session.
Gilbert outlined a list of legislation in which Stafford had an interest, including a state budget amendment from Del. Joshua Cole that addresses the county’s largest financial problem.
The amendment from the Stafford Democrat doesn’t seek money but directs the state to look into a situation that resulted from a popular tax-relief program.
Stafford is struggling to fill a fiscal hole in its coffers resulting mainly from revenue lost because of tax relief for disabled veterans. That program — along with tax relief for seniors — equates to $40 million Stafford won’t have in the next fiscal year.
The locality, like its neighbor Spotsylvania County, is also anxious about bills on the governor’s desk that would expand collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.
Anthony Toigo, Stafford’s intergovernmental affairs manager, told the supervisors that this legislation, if signed into law, could cost the county “tens of millions of dollars” or more.
In better legislative news for Stafford, Gilbert said she expects that a measure to allow localities to hold a voter referendum to raise the sales tax by 1% to pay for school construction will appear in some form when the state budget is finalized.
Bills that would have called for the referendum ability, which Stafford has sought for some time, weren’t approved this year. But Gilbert said she’s been “assured” by leaders in the House of Delegates and state Senate that the issue is a top priority for the Democratic majority in the General Assembly.
