Virginia County Votes Not to Report Illegal Alien Terrorists to ICE—in Name of ‘Public Safety’
The Arlington County, Virginia, Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to end its police department’s ability to report illegal aliens arrested for felonies and terrorist activity to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Board members couched their decision as a way to protect immigrant communities from the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, which, funny enough, target the types of criminals that Arlington is now protecting.
Prior to this egregious decision to disregard the public’s safety, the Arlington County Police Department’s interaction with ICE was already restricted in the county’s “Trust Policy,” also known as “Arlington’s Commitment to Strengthening Trust with Our Immigrant Communities,” enacted in 2022 and updated last year.
Section 7 of the “Trust Policy” very narrowly carved out a few exceptions for when police were allowed to report arrests of illegal aliens to ICE. These were for instances when police made arrests for felonies, gang activity, terrorism, and human trafficking.
The draft document had identified the presence of these illegal aliens as a “threat to the community.”
And the county was right. Now, Section 7 is crossed out in unambiguous red ink, and terrorists and other dangerous criminals will be effectively shielded from deportation.
“What the removal of Section 7 actually means is that we are not going to allow anymore that our law enforcement proactively contacts the federal government immigration authorities on any issue,” said Board Chair Takis Karantonis, a Democrat.
Several so-called immigrant rights groups have been leading a yearslong pressure campaign for Arlington police to stop all contact with ICE, specifically targeting Section 7.
Karantonis claimed that the community has “seen a decrease in safety” since the Trump administration has started deporting dangerous illegal aliens. Board members said immigrants are increasingly afraid to call 911 for fear of deportation—a claim, as TV station WJLA noted, that was made without supporting data.
“Sending people to foreign prisons and claiming we have no way to get them back is not normal,” said Democrat Board Member Maureen Coffey, possibly referring to the recent case of alleged MS-13 gang member and wife-beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration deported along with other gang members to a mega-prison in El Salvador. She, too, claimed that not cooperating with ICE is an issue of “public safety.”
Karantonis likewise insisted that the Trump administration is “infringing on the Constitution” by denying illegal immigrants—presumably like Abrego Garcia—due process.
However, keeping terrorists and gang members in the country would lead to more crimes and medical emergencies—specifically related to gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma—not less. This would especially affect immigrant populations, who are often exposed to this criminal behavior in their communities.
Meanwhile, since January, the administration has arrested over 219 known or suspected terrorists in the U.S., and, according to the Department of Homeland Security, 3 in 4 of the total 66,463 aliens arrested in the first 100 days of the new administration were criminals. This includes 2,288 gang members and hundreds of sex offenders and murderers.
The Trump administration’s targeted deportation of dangerous criminal aliens is exposing the far-left’s bottom line when it comes to protecting illegal aliens. It’s not about compassion. It’s not to protect hardworking legal immigrants toiling to make a living. And it certainly has nothing to do with “public safety.”
No. This system of protecting criminals who broke the law to come here can only lead to more left-leaning political supporters and more communities dependent on government handouts, effectively lining the pockets of government cronies—even at the local level.
Meanwhile the coffers of many government contractors and nongovernmental organizations like Catholic Charities are being emptied. What used to be a dependable flow of government grants creating a multibillion-dollar industry facilitating entry into the United States for illegal immigrants is no more. The new administration won’t stand for the misuse of taxpayer money and seeks to undo the damage the last administration and these organizations wreaked on our communities and the economy.
But the Left is angry. What it wants is a dingy, dilapidated, crime-ridden, third-world nightmare where no one will remember the Shining City on a Hill America used to be. They can gaslight us all they want about their bleeding-heart admonitions and hidden motives. But finally, Americans are on to them.
Erin Poff
Erin Poff is a development writer in the donor relations department at The Heritage Foundation.
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