ICE came to Fairfax County to arrest a man charged with child sexual battery — and the county let him walk. So what did Reps. Don Beyer, Suhas Subramanyam and James Walkinshaw do? They staged a surprise visit to an ICE facility, threatened to throw agents in prison, and stood behind an activist accused of trying to run officers over. All three are on your ballot November 3rd.
What You Need To Know:
On August 11th, in the Bailey’s Crossroads area of Fairfax County, an ICE agent pointed a gun at a woman named Carolina Molina. A dashcam caught the agent saying, “Are you following us? This is your warning. You almost ran us over” (WTOP).
The Department of Homeland Security’s account is not the one you’ll hear from these three congressmen. DHS says Molina was an “anti-ICE agitator” who “drove in circles” around agents and tried to harm officers with her vehicle “to help illegal aliens get away,” and that she could face criminal prosecution (WTOP). You can decide for yourself whether pointing a weapon at a car bearing down on you counts as “unjustified.” What you cannot do is pretend the officers picked that fight.
But a viral video was exactly what Fairfax’s Democrat delegation had been waiting for.
Five days before that video, on August 6th, Reps. Beyer, Subramanyam and Walkinshaw turned up unannounced at ICE’s temporary holding facility in Chantilly. They said they were responding to “reports of overcrowding and lengthy stays.”
Then their own joint statement gave the game away: “At the time of our visit, we did not witness overcrowding. ICE staff asserted that they are complying with a recent court order limiting stays at temporary processing facilities like Chantilly to 12 hours” (Rep. Beyer’s office).
In plain English: they went looking for a scandal, found a facility following a court order, and issued a press release anyway. That is not oversight. That is three politicians using taxpayer-funded federal agents as a backdrop.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, who represents the Reston and western Fairfax portions of the Tenth District, went furthest. Days after the Bailey’s Crossroads video, he said he wants ICE officers to “face…criminal charges if you pull a gun on someone” (Blue Virginia). Think about the message that sends to an agent trying to arrest a gang member: hesitate, or you might be the one in handcuffs.
Rep. James Walkinshaw, who took over the Eleventh District seat in 2025, has made ICE his signature target. He voted against a $70 billion enforcement funding bill and complained that Democrat “guardrails” — limits on face coverings, body-camera mandates, new use-of-force rules — were stripped out, blaming “Stephen Miller at the White House” (NPR). In June he introduced the DHS Accountability Act, layering new reporting requirements, outside investigations and evidence-retention rules onto agents already stretched thin (Patch). He has argued that “if there was body cam footage of these incidents, the level of outrage across the country would be exponentially higher” (Blue Virginia) — an admission that the outrage he’s counting on depends on the right footage going viral.
Rep. Don Beyer, the senior member of the three and a Democrat since he entered Congress in 2015, put it in writing on August 18th: he urged “Northern Virginians to exercise extreme caution” around federal agents and accused them of “regularly ignoring their training” (Alexandria Brief). A sitting congressman telling his constituents to be wary of federal law enforcement — that is where the Democrat party’s most extreme activists have dragged these three men.
Here is what none of the three press releases wanted you dwelling on.
When 7News rode along with ICE in Northern Virginia, agents were pursuing Marvin Mateo-Alberto, a Honduran national charged with incest and aggravated sexual battery of a child. The Fairfax County Adult Detention Center declined ICE’s detainer, so agents had to arrest him out in the community instead. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Director Russell Hott called ignoring “another lawful request from another law enforcement agency” what it is — “disheartening” — and warned that it “puts the entire community at risk” (WJLA). That same operation swept up Juan Antonio Garcia-Julian, a Guatemalan with prior convictions for strangling a family member, and an MS-13 gang member.
And it goes higher than the county jail. In July, Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger refused an ICE detainer for Abdul Jalloh, a 32-year-old from Sierra Leone charged with murdering 41-year-old Stephanie Minter — a man who, by the state’s own Democrat Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell’s account, carried more than 30 criminal charges and 150 law-enforcement contacts (Fox News).
That is the split screen. On one side, agents trying to remove a child predator and a murder suspect. On the other, three congressmen and a governor treating those agents like the problem.
Normal parents in Annandale, Reston and Bailey’s Crossroads did not ask for any of this. They did not ask their county to release a man charged with abusing a child. They did not ask their congressmen to threaten agents with prison. Common-sense Virginians want the same thing every community wants: dangerous people arrested and removed, and honest cops backed up when they do a hard job.
Beyer, Subramanyam and Walkinshaw made a different bet — that the loudest anti-ICE voices in the Democrat base matter more than the families who just want to be safe. They represent those activists well. The question is whether they represent you.
For once, the timing is simple. All three of these men — Beyer, Subramanyam and Walkinshaw — are on the ballot on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026. You do not have to wait for a state election or a school board cycle. You can register your answer to all three at once.
Register. Vote early. Volunteer. And tell your neighbors exactly how their congressman spent the summer. Safe communities are built by people who show up — starting with you.