Bad Judgment
General Assembly Democrats put self-interest above justice for Harrisonburg
Several years ago, Todd Gilbert arranged a town hall on immigration in Harrisonburg. Latino leaders organized several speakers to come and speak about the real experience of immigration to the Valley, as opposed to the demonization and slander of immigrants that often comes from rabble rousers on the right. Faced with evidence and testimony about how much a part of the community immigrants are, and how much they enhance the Valley, Gilbert disowned the results of his own town hall.
It wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
Undocumented immigrants are a major target of people on that side of the political spectrum. Those people have to have somebody, some Other, to campaign against. Richard Hofstadter wrote about it as the paranoid style or anti-intellectualism in American life. Witches in Salem, Irish in Baltimore and Boston, blacks and Jews anywhere and anytime, Japanese-Americans in World War II, communists in the 1950s. Now it’s the immigrant’s turn.
Immigrants in this country, undocumented or otherwise, pay the same taxes as citizens but don’t get the same level of services in return. From 1994-2023, “immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars,” according to the Cato Institute. Besides the fiscal benefit, immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens. But for those looking for someone to vilify, they offer that added rhetorical benefit that those who are undocumented can be called illegal. And the right wing can swing on that one word like a chimp on a trapeze. The harder you argue about the benefits of the immigrant community, the louder some folks will shout the word illegal. They seem to enjoy it, or can’t get past it, or think it tastes good coming out of their mouths.
A favorite policy of that group is 287(g), a provision of federal immigration law that allows local law enforcement to act as immigration cops. Many jurisdictions have stopped their participation in the program because it harms their communication with law-abiding members of the community who have imperfect or no documentation. Politicians on that side of the aisle love it. “The safety of our communities cannot be sacrificed just so that Democrats can feel good about themselves at cocktail parties,” Gilbert told the Washington Post some years back in support of 287(g). It’s a perfect talking point when they can denigrate Democrats as soft and immigrants as criminals all in one quip. Gilbert was minority leader of the House of Delegate at the time, and was Speaker of the House when his party held the majority. He was Trump’s U.S. Attorney for this part of the state for about a month.
While immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens, some will get in trouble. For those with misdemeanors, traffic citations, and various other entry points to the legal system, the first stop in Harrisonburg after July 1 might be Todd Gilbert’s courtroom.
Gilbert was appointed as a general district court judge by the General Assembly this year. A Democratic General Assembly appointed an anti-immigrant judge, the state’s former top Republican, in a Democratic city that’s 25 percent immigrant. How the city’s residents voted was not relevant to the Democratic majority. The demographics of the city were not relevant to the Democrats who control both houses of the General Assembly. What was relevant to them was the desire of local members of the General Assembly, Republicans all, to give a gift to one of their own.
That’s how judges are chosen by the General Assembly. The members who live in the judicial district, the 26th in our case, choose a judge and the Democratic majority rubber stamps it. Democrats get to pick their judges in areas where they dominate the judicial district, so nobody is going to send a white supremacist to Petersburg or Richmond. Harrisonburg’s immigrant population doesn’t get the same consideration or courtesy.
In theory, delegates and senators who know and understand an area of the state will choose the judges for that area. That theory is bullshit. Judgeships are political plums, patronage to be handed out by the local legislators. While they may choose qualified judges, that doesn’t stop them from using the appointments as political coin. The appointments can be rewards to political friends or methods to manipulate elections by affecting who chooses to run or not run. Democrats in the General Assembly could refuse to appoint anti-immigrant judges to heavily immigrant areas. But then they would not get to appoint judges in their districts. They’re not going to give that up in order to help people who can’t vote for them.
Democrats could appoint a majority of judges in Virginia before the next gubernatorial election. But then, some of them will say, they won’t be able to make judicial choices the next time the Republicans have the majority. In other words, they’re already planning to lose. With appointments like this, it’s no wonder.