Coming: Havoc in Herndon

THE HERNDON Town Council, having inherited an orderly situation regarding the management of day laborers, has opted to replace it with disorder. Now, there's a novel approach to municipal governance.

For almost two years, more than 100 workers -- most of them Hispanic and many presumed to be illegal immigrants -- have gathered each morning at a converted police station, where they are matched with employers seeking help on construction, landscaping and other job sites. Everyone agrees that the job center there, managed by a nonprofit group, has operated in a calm, controlled and well-organized manner. But starting next Friday, the center will cease to exist, the workers will be cast back onto the streets and Herndon will be treated to the sort of unruly, unregulated daily scrum of workers scrambling for day jobs that triggered so many complaints before the center was established in late 2005. In the words of Dennis D. Husch, a Town Council member and vice mayor who pushed for the center's abolition, residents can expect a "train wreck" for a while, and possibly for some time to come.

At least Mr. Husch was being honest. He and other members of the Town Council campaigned for office on the promise that they would stop the center, which was funded by Fairfax County, from offering publicly funded services to illegal immigrants. They imagined that once those workers were pushed out the door, they would simply go elsewhere or disappear, because the town also had an anti-solicitation ordinance barring job-seekers and employers from striking deals in public. Their position -- old-time nativism masquerading as a stand on principle -- carried them to electoral victory last year.

But last week a judge said no dice. If the town barred illegal immigrants from the job center, said Judge Leslie Alden of the Fairfax Circuit Court, then it could not legally enforce its no-solicitation ordinance. In other words, she ruled, day laborers, even if they have entered the country illegally, are entitled to equal protection of the laws. This is a constitutional no-brainer. As the 14th Amendment says, "No state shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Forced into a corner, the council decided to blow everything up: No more day-laborer center. No more anti-solicitation ordinance. No more peace and quiet. Council members say they hope that zoning and trespassing laws will suffice to prevent impromptu job-seeking sites from forming, as such sites did two years ago, at curbsides and in convenience-store parking lots. But the truth is that the police have few tools to work with. So once again, the workers will be in the streets. Is that what voters had in mind when they elected this council?