Across from my residential development in northern Virginia is a Joe Gibbs Youth for Tomorrow center for troubled youth. As the Daily Signal has reported, we learned that the federal government is now placing unaccompanied illegal minors at this facility near our neighborhood.
Republican Corey Stewart, the chairman of Prince William County’s Board of Supervisors, has been demonized in the press for trying to check the immigration status of people arrested in the county. In reporting this development on Wednesday, the local NPR station WAMU hounded Stewart about using immigration as a “wedge issue to fearmonger”:
WAMU reporter Armando Trull asked, “You know, in the past, Mr. Stewart, you’ve been accused of using the immigration topic as a wedge issue to fearmonger. Do you think this is what’s happening now? Do you think they’re going to be protesting outside that school, the same way we’ve seen protest in California, and how would you feel about that?”
Stewart tried to stay on the “compassionate” side of the issue: “Well, I would hope that citizens would not do that. I do not want to see that happen.”
Why should protesters be discouraged? Leftists can spit on our soldiers with the media's assent, but you can't picket illegal aliens? These NPR reporters don't object when illegal aliens protest in the streets, as if they were citizens who had a vote. (Yesterday, as I turned out of the neighborhood to go to work, a local police car was parked in the Youth for Tomorrow driveway. Was that to turn away protesters?)
Stewart told the Post, “At the end of the day, there is a good possibility that these children are going to need county services -- education, medical and social services -- and the county is going to have to end up being the caretaker of these children."
Armando Trull and WAMU pulled the usual media double standard out on the old "wedge issues" card. A flood of illegal aliens can apparently never create a "wedge issue." Only those who oppose it can. By their tilted standard, liberals trying to exploit an issue like immigration -- insisting Republicans are going to be defeated as young and minority voters lean Democratic -- can never be divisive or drive a "wedge."
Complaints to WAMU can be filed at http://wamu.org/contact.
Previous stories from my neighborhood:
WaPo Headline Writers Obscure Story: Drunk-Driving Illegal Alien Kills Nun
WaPo Reports DHS Will Keep Its Probe Secret on Drunk-Driving Illegal Alien Who Killed Nun
