Plan To House Immigrant Teens Prompts A Backlash In Virginia Town : NPR: The influx of tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children to the U.S. has sparked a controversy in an unlikely place far from the U.S.-Mexico border: a tiny town in southern Virginia.
The federal government had struck a deal to house some of the migrants in an empty college in Lawrenceville, in the heart of Virginia's tobacco belt. The first busload was expected as early as Thursday, but a local backlash has put the plan on hold.
Word spread this week that the detention center was a done deal, and it didn't go over well that most in this town of 1,400 had heard nothing of plans for the shelter.
"I was just shocked," says Brunswick County Sheriff Brian Roberts. "The way this process has been handled puts more fear in our eyes, because it's been shoved down our throat," he says.
