The residents of a small rural Virginia town thought the federal government had heard their objections to housing illegal immigrant children at a local college campus, but now a lawsuit has been filed over the issue, said Kathryn Watson, investigative reporter for Watchdog.org.
Watson told
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum" the plan was to house children at the campus of former St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville, Va., near the North Carolina border.
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She said the federal government and the college had "already signed the contract" when residents of the town objected.
"On June 19 of this year, they decided to have a last minute town hall meeting, where more than 1,000 people in a town of 1,300 and a county of 17,000 people showed up to say this is a problem," Watson said.
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At that time, Watson said the "feds backed off" from the project, although no vote had taken place over the issue. She said a lawsuit was then filed against local officials, claiming discrimination about the project.
"Several months later, a fair housing group that's based in Virginia . . . decided to go ahead and file a discrimination complaint, basically saying that the town, the county, and the county sheriff discriminated against these children and financially hurt the college by discriminating against people based on their national origin," she said.
Watson said money was a factor in the issue, since the college was "very much in debt," and would have received "$160,000 a month to house these kids."
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