What You Need To Know:
What he wrote. On August 31, Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA-11) published an op-ed on MS NOW (the network formerly known as MSNBC) titled “This is the cost of Trump’s ever-widening immigration trap.” He names people who died during enforcement encounters, calls the administration’s approach a disregard for “the value of human life,” and closes by asking Republicans “how many more” (Walkinshaw.house.gov).
What he left out: his own county. In February, Stephanie Minter, 41, was stabbed to death at a Fairfax County bus stop. The accused, Abdul Jalloh, is an illegal immigrant who by Democrat Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell’s own count carried more than 30 criminal charges and 150 police contacts. Police had warned Democrat Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s office three separate times that releasing him could get someone killed (WJLA, Fox News). Her name does not appear in his op-ed.
Neither does this one. ICE tried to take custody of Marvin Mateo-Alberto, charged with incest and aggravated sexual battery of a child. The Fairfax County jail refused the detainer and agents had to hunt him down in the community (WJLA). That refusal is county policy — the 2021 “Trust Policy” adopted while Walkinshaw sat on the Board of Supervisors. In March, every Democrat on that board, without a word of discussion, killed Republican Pat Herrity’s request to even review it after Minter’s death (FFXnow).
He voted no on the tools, then complained about the results. Walkinshaw voted against the $70 billion enforcement bill, then blamed “Stephen Miller at the White House” when his “guardrails” didn’t survive (NPR). His op-ed calls for body cameras and warrants. His record calls for defunding first and negotiating never.
The policy he’s attacking is working. Southwest border encounters fell from 1.53 million in FY2024 to 237,538 in FY2025 — an 84% drop, the lowest of any year since 1970. Monthly crossings have stayed under 10,000 since February 2025 (Pew Research).
This is a career move, not constituent service. Walkinshaw has been in Congress one year. He has already staged an unannounced ICE “oversight” visit that found nothing (Beyer.house.gov), introduced a bill to bury agents in paperwork (Patch), and now landed a national op-ed. That’s a résumé for a cable-news contributor contract, not for the families of Annandale, Burke, and Fairfax City.
Walkinshaw’s op-ed is built on a sleight of hand. He counts deaths in enforcement encounters — ten, he says, and every one of them deserves a full investigation. Then he treats that number as the whole ledger.
It isn’t. Regular families in Fairfax County live on the other side of that ledger.
Cheryl Minter buried her daughter this year. She came to the Board of Supervisors asking what the county would do differently so that no other mother has to. Chairman Jeff McKay answered by defending the Trust Policy as “a vital role in our status as the safest jurisdiction of our size in the nation” (WJLA). Tell that to Stephanie.
Just up the road in Maryland, Rachel Morin, a mother of five, was raped and murdered on a hiking trail in 2023 by Victor Martinez-Hernandez, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who is now serving life (FOX45 Baltimore). Her family spent two years waiting for a verdict. They did not get an op-ed from their congressman.
And on the same Northern Virginia ride-along where ICE went after Mateo-Alberto, agents also picked up Juan Antonio Garcia-Julian, previously convicted of strangling a family member, and an MS-13 member (WJLA). Walkinshaw’s op-ed says a majority of ICE detainees “committed no violent crimes.” Fine — then the ones ICE is chasing through Fairfax parking lots because the county jail won’t hand them over are exactly the violent ones. His county’s policy, and his party’s governor, are the reason agents are in the community at all.
Walkinshaw objects to revoking visas from people who entered on tourist or business visas and then filed for asylum. Think about what that means. You told a consular officer you were coming to visit Disney World, then declared you were fleeing for your life. One of those statements was false. Revoking a visa obtained under false pretenses isn’t a “trap.” It’s what the visa said on the front.
He objects to a 3,000-arrests-a-day target as “quantity over threat assessment.” After four years in which the border saw more than two million encounters a year at its peak, the backlog is measured in millions. There is no version of enforcing the law at that scale that looks small.
And he proposes judicial warrants before home entries, body cameras, and outside investigations — reasonable things to debate. He had the chance to negotiate for them inside a funding bill. He voted no instead and blamed the White House. That’s not legislating. That’s content.
Common-sense Virginians in the Eleventh District did not send James Walkinshaw to Washington to become the Democrat party’s designated ICE critic on cable news. They sent him to make Fairfax County safer. One year in, he has not said Stephanie Minter’s name in a national forum, has not asked his former colleagues on the Board to revisit the policy that shields her accused killer from a detainer, and has not cast a single vote that puts a dangerous illegal immigrant on a plane.
He answers to the activists who fill the MS NOW comment section. Normal parents waiting at a Fairfax bus stop are on their own.
November 3. Walkinshaw is on the ballot. Register. Vote early. And send this to a neighbor in Annandale, Burke, or Fairfax City who still thinks their congressman is paying attention to them.