C4 arrested from C1
want justice to be done,” the woman said. Other family mem- bers declined to comment or could not be located. Hylton said Bellard and Gilmer were known to travel from Texas to Prince George’s County, where they met up with their local con- nections.
“Obviously, they had a relation-
ship involving a drug sale,” Hyl- ton said. “At some point, there was some type of dispute.” Brooks and Sikyala had no criminal records in Maryland, ac- cording to online court records, although they have been sued for various debts. As of Saturday, Hylton said, authorities had re- moved 10 tons of compacted trash from the garage and an ad- jacent house.
Stacks of rubble were still vis- ible inside and outside the apart- ment Saturday, but there was a finished hardwood floor and a TV with a VCR. Neighbors said that in recent months, people often moved in and out of the house and that children could some- times be seen playing in the yard. Online county records indicate
that Mukala Sikyala and Silwano Sikyala had been listed as the property owners since 1993. Rec- ords indicate that Mukala Sikyala died in 2008. Hylton said it ap- peared the property owners were not connected to the killings. The victims, he said, were leasing the property. Law enforcement sources said the dispute was straightforward: Brooks and Sikyala owed Bellard
money for drugs, and they could not pay him. Two sources said Bellard shot the children because he was afraid that they could tes- tify, despite their age. Sources also said the dispute does not ap- pear to extend beyond the sus- pects and victims. The sources spoke on the condition of ano- nymity because the investigation
is ongoing and they were not au- thorized to speak publicly. “I think these are probably
relatively unsophisticated peo- ple,” one source said. “I think they probably just figured they had to kill everybody.” Waylon Bellard, Bellard’s brother and a D.C. area resident, said what happened was “devas-
ROBERT McCARTNEY
Although the sisters can forgive, issues raised can’t be forgotten
mccartney from C1
controversy so clearly that I feel compelled to write about it. All sides in the immigration
debate tried to use the dramatic details of the nun’s death to push their own agendas. There are basically three contesting camps: Let’s call them the demagogues, the whitewashers and the frustrated reformers. The demagogues cited the incident partly to press for a new law in Virginia, similar to the controversial one in Arizona, to expand the police’s power to identify illegal immigrants to be deported. Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, proposed such a bill in June. The whitewashers said the
case isn’t about illegal immigration at all, but about the need to combat drunken driving. The frustrated reformers — including me — say the case certainly does implicate illegal immigration, but not necessarily the way demagogues say. The problem isn’t that the police lack powers but that the immigration courts are so overwhelmed and poorly managed that they can’t handle the deportation cases they already have. The Bolivian immigrant
charged with killing Mosier and
severely injuring two other nuns should have been deported at least a year ago, if not earlier. He was convicted of drunken driving in 2007 and again in 2008. But the immigration case was postponed three times. The reasons are now under investigation, but the delays are no surprise. For years, federal policy has focused too much on staging politically attractive raids and arrests and too little on the humdrum work of handling the resulting cases. As a result, the average wait in a deportation case is more than a year, and it regularly runs much longer. “All of the resources have been put into rounding people up, and very few resources have been going into the hearing process,” said Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “You’ve got this whole backlog, and no one has thought further than what looks good in the press releases.” Judges in the Justice
Department’s immigration division hear, on average, more than 1,000 cases a year, or about 20 mini-trials a week. The saying is that it’s like a criminal court with a traffic court workload. Yet the number of judges continues to hover around 230, as it has for years. There’s a severe shortage of clerks, too.
costly — is that the only alternative [to legalization] is mass deportation,” said Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress. A study by the group estimates that deporting all of the nation’s illegal immigrants would cost $300 billion. Meanwhile, the whitewashers basically aren’t bothered much that people are here illegally. Some take a moral position that we’re all God’s children, so what does it matter whether they have the right papers? Others have economic reasons for welcoming illegal immigrants who are willing to work low-paying jobs and easy to push around. As a result, the whitewashers
GERALD MARTINEAU FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Benedictine sister Christine Vladimiroff talked about forgiveness during the Bristow retreat the nuns in the car crash were headed to.
The other problem is a failure
to set realistic priorities about which cases to handle first. At present, deportation cases are divided roughly evenly between those involving criminals and noncriminals. But why bother with noncriminals until we’ve dealt with all the criminals? It’d make more sense to speed up handling of, say, an accused drunk driver, even if it meant letting some folks continue to bus tables at a restaurant when they’ve overstayed their visas. The Justice and Homeland
Security departments have stepped up hiring and moved to set clearer priorities, but there’s a long way to go. The division between the
demagogues and the whitewashers exists at the national level, too, and blocks comprehensive immigration reform. The demagogues constantly stir hostility against anyone in the country illegally. They suffer from hypocrisy. They adamantly oppose creating a path for amnesty for the 12 million or so illegal immigrants now in the country, but they simultaneously avoid talking about the logical consequence of such a policy, which is that 12 million people would have to be deported. “The killer fact in this debate
that they are not willing to admit — because they know it’s highly unrealistic and exorbitantly
aren’t willing to support truly effective enforcement measures, especially against employers who hire illegal immigrants. The division frustrates
reformers who want a trade-off in which amnesty is gradually extended to people here illegally in exchange for real enforcement of the laws.
“Enforcement people don’t
believe in legalization. People who believe in legalization don’t believe in enforcement of any kind. This is why the grand bargain has always fallen apart,” said Stewart Lawrence, former consultant for the American Immigration Law Foundation. Dramatic cases like Mosier’s only increase the importance of pushing for such a compromise. In the meantime, let’s hire a few more immigration judges.
mccartneyr@washpost.com
Va. GOP reclaiming its voice in immigration dispute GOP from C1
some Republicans, including Mc- Donnell, who has tried to take a moderate, pragmatic approach during his short time in office. Some conservatives warn that lawmakers need to protect against coming across as insensi- tive to Hispanics — a problem that has contributed to losses in state and national elections. Michael Thompson, executive
director of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, a con- servative think tank based in Fair- fax County, said some Republi- cans have a “mean streak” when talking about immigration. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction. They need to be careful,” he said. “The Republican Party is just nuts if they do this the wrong way. His- panics are the second-largest mi- nority group in the country to- day.”
Back on the front burner
Virginia’s recent shift into the center of the national immigra- tion debate was more a reentry: Long before Arizona passed its new law, Herndon voted to close a day-laborer center frequented by illegal immigrants, Prince Wil- liam and Loudoun counties had curtailed services to illegal im- migrants and directed police to check the immigration status of anyone arrested, and state law-
makers had considered hundreds of immigration proposals. “In some ways, this is coming back to Virginia from Arizona,” said Tim Freilich, legal director for the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia. “We see in the Arizona statute many lessons I think the [national groups] learned in Prince William County.” But after putting the issue at the center of their party platform for several years, Republican in- terest in immigration waned be- cause of the growing economic crisis, a clearer understanding of the state’s limitations on a largely federal issue and backlash at the voting booth. Republicans say that immigra- tion has always been important but that the issue was put on the back burner the past few years be- cause the souring economy took precedent. “People were concerned about jobs, the economy, taxes,” McDon- nell said. “I talked about what people were most concerned about at the time.” Cuccinelli said that “grass-roots
activists” have always pressed him on immigration but that vot- ers told him last year it was not the top issue. He said that even now, it has not regained the im- portance it had in 2007, when the economy was in better shape and more illegal immigrants were finding work in the state, partic-
ularly in Northern Virginia. But Stewart, one of the state’s most outspoken elected officials on illegal immigration, accused his party’s leaders — including McDonnell and Cuccinelli — of being “afraid” of the issue, even though last year he, too, declared the issue over.
“Republicans play it too soft.
They are afraid of being labeled intolerant,” he said. “It does take political courage. It’s a politically risky issue.”
About 275,000 to 325,000 of the 12 million illegal immigrants esti- mated to be in the United States live in Virginia, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washing- ton. The U.S. Census Bureau says an additional 435,000 people in Virginia are not U.S. citizens and are in the state legally. Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple
(D-Arlington), a leader in the Democratic-led body, said Repub- licans have tried to take laws too far by targeting individuals based on their appearance, not their be- havior. “Politically, it makes no sense to write off a segment of the U.S. population,” Whipple said. “In the long run, it’s a losing issue for the Republicans.”
‘It’s an ideal issue’ Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-
Prince William) said he asked for Cuccinelli’s legal opinion in May,
after the Arizona law passed, be- cause he thought that some of the same people who were interested in combating illegal immigration a few years ago would approach him again for a solution. He did not think he would be able to get his proposals through the Senate, he said, and he wanted to have a better understanding of what he could pursue before legislators re- turn in January.
Since then, other proponents of tougher immigration enforce- ment have seized on a recent car accident involving an illegal im- migrant. The man was charged with involuntary manslaughter and drunken-driving-related counts after one nun was killed and two others were injured when their car was hit head-on in Bris- tow. Several lawmakers say they received calls and e-mails after the accident asking for action. “I think the Republicans,
they’ve seen the polling, and they’ve seen the public interest. They’re looking for a way to align themselves with that energy,” said Michael M. Hethmon, legal coun- sel for the national group Immi- gration Reform Law Institute, which helped craft the Arizona law and provided technical assis- tance to Stewart. Stephen J. Farnsworth, a politi- cal analyst at George Mason Uni- versity, said it was inevitable for Republicans to return to immi-
gration because they are mostly united on the issue, while Demo- crats are divided. “Immigration is too good an is- sue for Republicans not to come back to over and over again,” he said. “It behooves any Republican to take this up. It’s an ideal issue.” But some legislators say that Virginia, which was quick to act after it was discovered that sever- al of the Sept. 11 hijackers had state identification cards, has done all it can. It passed legislation requiring applicants to provide proof of citi- zenship or legal presence in the United States, along with proof of Virginia residency. It banned ille- gal immigrants from getting non- emergency taxpayer benefits, such as welfare. It requires that jails check the immigration status of everyone who has been arrest- ed and taken into custody. Sen. John C. Watkins (R-Ches-
terfield), who led a state immigra- tion panel under Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and is now co-chairman of an immigration task force for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said it’s time for Congress to step in. “The federal government needs to do their job,” he said.
kumaranita@washpost.com
Staff writer Rosalind S. Helderman and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
S
KLMNO Suspects in Md. slaughter called drug couriers
ured he would go out on a whim and do something stupid like that. But to do something as hor- rendous as [the killings], that’s not him.” Waylon Bellard said his broth- er lived in Texas and received dis- ability payments. He said some years ago, his brother “got him- self shot, and he was totally changed.” “The people he started sur- rounding himself with were not the kind of people that were posi- tive people, and that’s what the problem is,” Waylon Bellard said. “I tried not to believe it at first. I tried very hard not to believe it. I tried to find every possible sce- nario to make him not be the one. And I just don’t know.” Bellard also said the way police
JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS Authorities said 10 tons of compacted trash were removed from buildings on the property.
tating for both sides of my fami- ly.” He said his family is related to the victims through marriage, and he was struggling to come to grips with the charges against his brother. “That’s not his character,” Way- lon Bellard said. “For him to do something dumb and stupid like that, like the selling drugs, I fig-
portrayed the victims was not to- tally accurate. They were reno- vating the property, he said, and had “been cleaning up there for months.” Hylton credited the quick ar- rests to patrol officers’ rapid re- sponse and homicide detectives’ follow-up. He said patrol officers identified and detained individu- als of interest “on or close to the crime scene.” Bellard and Gilmer, he said, “admitted their involve- ment in the execution.” One law enforcement source said Bellard was among those de- tained near the crime scene. An- other source said Gilmer was de- tained elsewhere.
zapotoskym@washpost.com rojasr@washpost.com
Staff researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010 OBITUARIES
Stephen W. Gibson TOPOGRAPHICAL ENGINEER
Stephen W. Gibson, 92, a re- tired topographical engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers, died July 8 at Heatherwood Re- tirement Community in Burke. He had congestive heart failure. Mr. Gibson, a Fairfax County resident for 60 years, spent 30 years as a topographical engineer in the Corps of Engineers Topo- graphic Laboratories at Fort Bel- voir, performing research in car- tography and reproduction. He retired in 1977.
Stephen William Gibson was born in Lewisham, England. He moved to Detroit with his family at age 9. After graduating from high school, Mr. Gibson moved to Washington to work at photo- graphic and printing firms before entering the Army in 1941. After attending the Corps of Engineers’ officer candidate school, he was sent to England, where he de- signed aerial maps for the Eighth Air Force and the British Royal Air Force. After active duty, he served two decades in the Army Reserve. Mr. Gibson was an amateur ra- dio operator. He published sever- al books in the 1980s on cellular communications and radio, in- cluding “Radio Antennas” (1983) and “Cellular Mobile Radiotele- phones” (1987). He also served on the vestry at Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax. His wife of 50 years, the former
Margaret Bird, died in 2000. Survivors include three chil- dren, Ann Allan of Falmouth, Maine, Paul Gibson of Springfield and Philip Gibson of New Bern, N.C.; a brother; and three grand- children.
— Megan Buerger
David Bryant NSA LINGUIST
David Bryant, 89, a retired
cryptanalyst and Russian linguist for the National Security Agency, died Aug. 3 of cancer at Washing- ton Hospital Center. Mr. Bryant worked at the NSA from 1947 until 1968. He was among an early group of 14 Afri- can Americans who joined the NSA after World War II. At first, he transferred Russian messages to computer tape. After attending Russian language classes through the NSA in the early 1950s, he translated Soviet messages, which were sometimes included in ordinary transmissions such as weather reports. In 1968, he joined the Equal Employment Opportunity Com- mission, where he worked in community relations as a special assistant to the commissioner. He retired in 1995. David Bryant was born in Val- dosta, Ga. He received a bach- elor’s degree in anthropology from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in 1942 and served in the Navy during World War II. He became a statis- tical clerk at the Census Bureau before joining the NSA. His wife of 39 years, Inez But-
ler Bryant, died in 1984. Survivors include two daugh-
ters, Jacqueline Hill of Chicago and Anita Bryant of Atlanta; and two grandchildren.
— Timothy R. Smith
Peter Collins FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICER
Peter Collins, 72, a Foreign
Service officer from 1963 until his retirement in 1994, died July 17 of a cardiac embolism at his home in Albuquerque. Mr. Collins had been a delegate
to the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 to end the Vietnam War and was a specialist on Greece-U.S. rela- tions. From 1983 to 1984, he was a senior fellow at the Hoover Insti- tution at Stanford University. He was fluent in French, Greek, Viet- namese and Portuguese. Mr. Collins was born in South
Bend, Ind., and was a 1959 gradu- ate of Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa. After serving in the Army from 1961 to 1963, he moved to Washington. He re- ceived a master’s degree in educa- tion from George Washington University in 1993. He lived in Bethesda from 1977 until 1994, when he relocated to Albuquerque, where he was a consultant at Sandia National Laboratories. Survivors include his wife of 39 years, Gloria Mack Collins of Al- buquerque; a stepmother, Emily Collins of Blacksburg, Va.; a sis- ter; and a brother.
— Lauren Wiseman NEWS OBITUARIES
News obituaries can be faxed to 202-334-6553 or e-mailed to
newsobits@washpost.com. After sending the information, you must call 202-334-6477 to talk with a reporter.
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