The Melting Pot Boils Over

N ine years ago, John Stirrup says, he and his wife, Heidi, decided to move out of South Arlington because "our neighborhood was changing pretty drastically. There was a big gang presence, and it was beginning to get dangerous."

"The final straw for me was when we found gang markings spray-painted on the trees," he recalls. But he wasn't about to walk away without taking a stand: At least twice, he caught the kids who were tagging trees, and he chastised them. They cursed him out and went about their business.

The Stirrups moved to Prince William County -- to Haymarket, to the promise of open spaces, good schools and a community that shares their values.

If John Stirrup's name sounds familiar, that's because he has been a county supervisor since 2004. He proposed a measure to take action against illegal immigrants, and the county board passed a scaled-down version of it last week. The resolution that supervisors approved empowers police to check into the immigration status of anyone who is arrested and directs county agencies to determine which services they can deny to illegal immigrants.

What compelled Stirrup to act was the sense that his new home is changing in ways disturbingly close to what he experienced in Arlington. "Not in my neighborhood," he says, "but when I visit the 7-Eleven, it's the same feel as we had in Arlington" -- a sense of being a stranger in his own community.

In his resolution, Stirrup summed up that sense in one word: "lawlessness." But with the county's crime rate falling steadily in recent years, I asked what exactly he meant.

"Lawlessness was a good word, because it really describes what people are enduring here," he says. "They wake up in the morning, and the house across the street has nine or 15 people living there instead of four. There are unregistered vehicles in the driveway and trash in the yard. We've seen a significant increase in rats. These individuals get in their cars, without license or insurance, and drive on our roads to get to jobs where they are paid off the books and under the prevailing wage, without benefits. On the weekends, there's extensive consumption of alcohol, loud music, and the comments women have told me about from the men are really unbelievable.

"These are not elements of a civil society."

Unlike many Prince William residents who are glad to see the county take a stand against illegal immigrants, Stirrup -- a Republican who represents the Gainesville district and works in Alexandria for a shipping industry trade association -- says he thinks local governments across the country can collectively force federal authorities to be more aggressive about deporting people who are in the country illegally.

Federal authorities say they have the capacity to deport only 40 illegal immigrants a month from Prince William, but Stirrup says pressure from the county can push that number higher.

The larger goal of restoring the rule of law, he says, is more important than the county police chief's concerns that the new policy will poison relations between police and immigrants who are victims of or witnesses to crimes.

Loudoun County supervisors moved this week to follow Prince William's lead, but other communities say that such an approach isn't necessary. Adam Ortiz, mayor of Edmonston, a small town inside the Beltway in Prince George's County, says that an influx of immigrants in his town brought overcrowding, graffiti and a sense that newcomers did not play by the rules. But Ortiz says he sees no need for crackdowns focused exclusively on immigrants.