On September 16, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano. The committee wants the records showing how his office treats criminal defendants who are not U.S. citizens. The subpoena letter gives him until September 25 to produce them.
This did not come out of nowhere. The committee first requested documents in January, again in June, and questioned Descano under oath at a hearing in May. According to the letter, his office handed over its written policies, limited immigration-related communications, and court documents on a small number of cases, but not the bulk of what was requested. The committee identified 27 specific defendants and asked a simple question: did your office consider immigration consequences in these cases? The letter says Descano gave a clear no for only four of them.
Descano does not have to be subpoenaed to learn where he stands. He told voters himself. His campaign website stated that, wherever possible, he would make charging and plea decisions that limit or avoid immigration consequences. According to the committee, that promise stayed on his website for seven years.
In December 2020, he put it into office policy. His guidelines for plea bargaining and charging lay out how defense attorneys can ask prosecutors to consider immigration consequences. They require defense counsel to submit a written legal analysis on law firm letterhead before any such discussion. That means his office should have a paper trail for every case where the policy was used.
Yet Descano now tells Congress his office does not track defendants’ nationality or immigration status, so it cannot say which cases the policy touched. A prosecutor who built a policy around avoiding deportation claims he has no idea how often it was used.
At the May hearing, Descano testified under oath that the policy was narrow, and that it was written with legal permanent residents in mind for minor crimes. According to the committee, he has since acknowledged in writing that the policy can apply to people in the country illegally.
In a September 7 letter, he raised a new argument he never mentioned at the hearing. He claimed the policy covers only negotiating plea deals, not moving to drop charges entirely. The committee points out that his own records show dropped charges are routinely part of plea negotiations.
When a policy’s defender keeps redefining what it covers, the public has every reason to want the records.
Fairfax families have seen what happens when repeat offenders cycle through the system. In February, Stephanie Minter, 41, was stabbed to death at a bus stop on Richmond Highway. The man charged with her murder, Abdul Jalloh, entered the country illegally in 2012 and had more than 30 arrests, according to the Department of Homeland Security. ICE had lodged a detainer against him in 2020, and he had been ordered removed.
In January 2023, Descano’s office dropped a malicious wounding charge against Jalloh. His office says it could not proceed without the victim’s participation. Less than a month later, Jalloh was arrested for aggravated malicious wounding. That charge was reduced, and he served seven months. Descano’s office says it made every effort to hold him accountable, including asking that he be held before trial. He was never deported.
It is not an isolated case. Last month, an accused killer walked out of a state mental hospital and fled the country using a passport he obtained on an embassy trip Descano’s office signed off on. Descano’s response then was that it wasn’t his job.
The House is not alone. In May, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division opened an investigation into whether Descano’s office discriminated against American citizens by offering preferential treatment to defendants in the country illegally. The department says it has not reached any conclusions. But two separate federal inquiries into one county prosecutor’s policies should concern every Fairfax resident.
Descano’s lawyers told the committee he testified voluntarily, produced more than 1,100 pages of documents, and answered in four separate letters. His office called the subpoena a needless escalation and part of a partisan siege on Fairfax County. He says the county is one of the safest large communities in the country.
If the policy is as narrow and harmless as he claims, the fix is simple. Identify the cases, show the records, and let the public judge. Pages of paper that don’t answer the question are not transparency.
The deadline is September 25. Contact Descano’s office and ask him to answer the committee’s question for all 27 defendants, not just four. Share this with neighbors who assume their prosecutor’s priorities match theirs. Remember this record when Fairfax voters choose their next Commonwealth’s Attorney in 2027.