Gabriel Adame raises his arms as other audience members applaud the Pahrump Town Board's decision Tuesday night to not consider a proposal that would have required illegal immigrants to register, pay a $200 fee and supply the names of family and employers. The board also rejected a resolution calling on lawmakers to make English the official language and step up enforcement of immigration laws. Photos by K.M. Cannon. People in favor of a proposed ordinance that would have required illegal immigrants to register with town authorities wave signs among the crowd at Tuesday night's Pahrump Town Board meeting. The board didn't even consider the ordinance. Tereso Lozano kisses his 8-month-old daughter, Sandy, during Tuesday's night's meeting in Pahrump.

PAHRUMP -- One radical ordinance was killed outright and the other was threatened with repeal on Tuesday, as Nye County's largest town inched back from its controversial entry into the national debate over illegal immigration.

Before a large and mostly appreciative crowd, Pahrump Town Board members refused to even entertain a proposal that would have required illegal immigrants to register at the town office, pay a $200 fee and supply the names of their family members and employers.

The decision was greeted by thunderous applause from the audience of more than 200 people, most of them Hispanic.

One man stood and clapped after the vote was cast. "That's leadership," he said.

Board member Paul Willis made the motion to pull the registration proposal from the agenda, saying he feared it would overshadow his other work on the board and he didn't want to "lay anything at the feet of the incoming Town Board."

Willis is one of three members who will leave the board at year's end.

For them, Tuesday night's meeting was their last.

Outgoing member Michael Miraglia placed the proposed registry on the agenda, as well as a resolution calling on state and federal lawmakers to make English the nation's official language and step up enforcement of immigration laws.

With one member of the five-person board absent, the resolution died in a 2-2 vote.

And there were clear indications Tuesday that another of Miraglia's ideas, the "English-only" ordinance adopted by the town in November, could be rescinded by the incoming board next year.

The first person to speak during public comment was Don Rust, who was sworn in Tuesday night and will take his seat on the board in January.

"Do we plan to change the name of the town of Pahrump?" Rust asked. "Because it's not English; it's Paiute."

Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo has already announced that his office would not enforce the immigration ordinances proposed by Miraglia.

Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said he was glad to see the board backing away from such measures, especially the proposal to require undocumented immigrants to register with the town.

"It was a clearly unconstitutional and unenforceable ordinance," Lichtenstein said during a break in the meeting. "It was just out of bounds."

Gabriel Adame said he came to the meeting prepared to lambaste the town's leadership. Instead, he told board members that he was "astonished" by their actions.

"You have united this community again," Adame said.

Not everyone shared that view.

Several people carried signs and American flags into the meeting. One sign read, "Americans for America." Another read, "Close the Damned Borders."

One gray-haired woman held up her middle finger to the board as she stomped out of the community center following the vote.

Ben Reygers said he immigrated to the United States from Europe "the legal way" in 1959.

"We are not going to give this land to people who just came across the border and invaded," he said. "If they want to come over legal, they're welcome."

For the most part, though, the audience was dominated by its large Hispanic contingent, including many who arrived more than an hour early and chatted in Spanish before the meeting began.

Pahrump resident Vicky Parker said she was thrilled to see them there. "The sign says, 'Welcome to Pahrump.' It does not say, 'No entrada.' "