By Michael Ginsberg

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has announced that he intends to submit a budget proposal to the upcoming General Assembly to withhold 599 funding from any local law enforcement agency that refuses to cooperate with an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer.  The Fairfax County Republican Committee fully supports this policy.

Some background: ICE is notified about every arrest in the US, electronically as well as through cooperative state and local law enforcement agencies.  ICE checks the immigration status of each arrestee.  If ICE identifies an arrestee as an illegal immigrant subject to deportation, it can issue an immigration detainer that asks local law enforcement agencies holding the individual to: (1) notify ICE as soon as possible when the individual is to be released; and (2) maintain custody of the individual for 48 hours after their scheduled release date to allow ICE to take custody of the individual to initiate deportation proceedings.  Local law enforcement is not required to comply with ICE detainers; they are requests, not mandatory commands.  

A vital purpose of immigration law is to protect American national security and public safety by preventing criminal individuals and gangs from entering the United States and establishing a presence here.  The Democrats’ de facto open borders policy over the last four years has overwhelmed ICE more than ever.  ICE detainers give ICE time to make arrangements to take illegal immigrants in local custody into federal custody to initiate deportation proceedings.

Numerous local law enforcement entities and the Boards of Supervisors that oversee them, including in Fairfax County, have publicly and proudly declared themselves to be implementing “sanctuary” or “trust” policies.  Fairfax County’s “Trust Policy”, per the county website, is intended to “reaffirm current county policy and improve community health, welfare, safety, security, and trust by ensuring that immigrant residents can access county services without fear that the information they share will be disclosed to federal immigration officials”.  In keeping with the Trust Policy, Fairfax County leaders have advised the public they will do no more than the minimum required to cooperate with ICE to enforce federal immigration law.  In particular, they have stated they will not cooperate with non-mandatory ICE detainer requests.

Over the last eight years, Democrats have adopted a position of de facto open borders.  Radical progressive Democrats are ideologically committed to open borders; other Democrats backed themselves into the corner of supporting open borders because they feared the radicals or to highlight their moral superiority and resistance to the Trump GOP.

When a local law enforcement agency refuses to cooperate with an ICE detainer, it is prioritizing progressive Democrats’ ideological commitment to open borders over national security and public safety.  An illegal immigrant subject to deportation who has a crime-related encounter with local law enforcement should be a high priority for federal immigration law enforcement.  Local law enforcement agencies that choose not to assist ICE in enforcing immigration law in such circumstances increase danger to the citizenry—there is no other way to say it.

In effect, such progressive Democrat-run local law enforcement agencies prefer to release individuals known to pose a public safety risk than subject them to deportation proceedings.  That is an ideological choice, frequently made by leaders who will not suffer the consequences of this choice themselves.

And these consequences are real. In recent years, Fairfax County has witnessed multiple violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants, including several high-profile homicides:

· In 2024, Herndon police charged an illegal immigrant with the brutal rape of a local woman, just days after he was released from jail despite having a disturbing criminal history.

· In 2023, an MS-13 gang member, in the country illegally, was convicted of murdering a 16-year-old boy in Fairfax County, leaving his body in a shallow grave.

· In 2024, Maudin Anibal Guzman-Videz, an illegal immigrant released by the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office despite multiple ICE detainers, was arrested for a murder in Oakton, Virginia.

These horrific crimes highlight the urgent need for Fairfax County to fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities to prevent further tragedies.  Knowing that a crime was avoidable—that authorities previously had the perpetrator in custody and could have facilitated the perpetrator’s deportation but chose not to—exponentially adds to the pain and devastation of the victims, their families, and the community.  It is blood-boiling.

Virginia’s 599 funding (under Va. Code § 9.1-165 et seq.) provides funding to law enforcement entities that meet minimum training criteria established by the state, submit accurate and up-to-date crime reports to the state police, and register sex offenders as required by the Code of Virginia.  Gov. Youngkin is seeking legislation that would cut 599 funding to law enforcement agencies that do not cooperate fully with ICE.

The 599 funding is one of the few levers the state has to force recalcitrant local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE to protect citizens from criminal illegal immigrants.  While the Fairfax GOP firmly believes in fully funding law enforcement, the ultimate purpose of the 599 funding is to maximally protect the citizens of their jurisdictions from crime.  A sheriff’s office or police department that does not fully cooperate with ICE and releases criminal illegal immigrants onto our streets simply is not doing that job.   

Under Gov. Youngkin’s budget proposal, local police departments would have an easy way to receive their 599 funds: fully cooperate with ICE detainers and hold illegal immigrant criminals until ICE can take custody of them.  All progressive sheriffs and police chiefs have to do is uphold their sworn responsibility to protect their citizens by not releasing illegal immigrants who have committed crimes onto our streets.  Our streets are safer and the departments get their funds.  Everybody wins!

Everybody, that is, except progressive ideologues that support open borders and regard any cooperation with ICE as a threat to that desire. 

If police departments run by elected progressives are more committed to releasing known, deportable criminal illegal immigrants onto our streets than they are in getting 599 funding, they and only they would be responsible for the loss of funding.  

Democrats and progressive immigration organizations claim that Gov. Youngkin’s measure will undermine trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement.  They contend otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants will be unwilling to report crimes committed by illegal immigrants because of their fear of deportation.  Democratic Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) told the Washington Post that Youngkin’s policy will “disincentivize crime victims and cooperating witnesses from participating in investigations to solve actual violent crime”.

This is merely pretextual rubbish.  To justify their ideological fixation with open borders, Democrats’ argument is this: We don’t want to lose the trust of the immigrant communities we serve, so we’d rather release illegal immigrant criminals subject to deportation proceedings onto community streets than transfer them to ICE custody for deportation.

Read that sentence again.

Is there any action local law enforcement could take more likely to undermine trust between law enforcement and the entire community, immigrants included, than releasing deportable criminals back into the community?

We are fully through the looking glass.  To enhance trust among immigrant communities to facilitate reporting crime to law enforcement, Democrats are willing to accept more crime.  Maybe immigrant communities will be more willing to report crime, but what we know for certain is that there will be more crime.

Fairfax County leaders are burning down the county in order to save it.

Unmentioned in the Democrats’ orgy of self-regard and virtue signaling is the fact that other immigrants suffer from crimes illegal immigrants commit, including human trafficking.  It’s far easier for wealthy, virtue-signaling Democrats to retreat behind their communities’ gates than it is for working-class immigrants.  But Democrats can’t preen for the cameras and pose as the great resisters, standing up to big bad bullies Donald Trump and Glenn Youngkin, by protecting their immigrant communities from the criminal acts of illegal immigrants.  

Fairfax Republicans support Gov. Youngkin’s policy because it is eminently sensible to strongly encourage local law enforcement to help ICE enforce federal immigration law.  What ICE asks of local law enforcement is minimal but particularly important at a time when ICE is still overwhelmed in dealing with the fallout from President Biden’s disastrous de facto open borders immigration policies.

A significant lesson from the 2024 election results is that Americans are tired of Democrats’ woke, moral posturing on issues across the board, especially including immigration, and they demand sensible policies that focus on government’s first responsibility: protecting national security and public safety.  If Democratic state legislators and Democrat-led police departments fail to internalize this lesson, they have only themselves to blame for the electoral, public safety, and budgetary consequences.