Why Is Virginia Leadership Ignoring the Risks of Sanctuary Policies?

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Why Is Virginia Leadership Ignoring the Risks of Sanctuary Policies?

Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Va. on March 2, 2026, in Richmond, Virginia. (Mike Kropf-Pool/Getty Images)

Jessica Vaughan / @jessicav_cis

Jessica M. Vaughan is director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.

Congress will soon scrutinize Fairfax County’s sanctuary policies at an April House Judiciary hearing titled “Fairfax County, Virginia: The Dangerous Consequences of Sanctuary Policies.” The need for that hearing is obvious.

On Feb. 23, Stephanie Minter was stabbed to death in Fredericksburg. The man accused of killing her, Abdul Jalloh, an illegal alien from Sierra Leone with dozens of prior arrests, had been released by local authorities despite requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to take him into custody.

Minter’s death underscores the real-world consequences that can follow when local jurisdictions decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Unless Virginia leaders change course on policies that restrict how law enforcement agencies collaborate with ICE, similar failures will continue to put residents at risk.

On her first day in office, Governor Abigail Spanberger rescinded former Governor Glenn Youngkin’s order requiring Virginia State Police and encouraging local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE. Her administration has also suggested that local agencies should not honor ICE detainers unless officers provide a judicial warrant, which is above and beyond what the law requires.

These policies copy the approach taken in sanctuary jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, and Seattle, where local police and sheriffs may not cooperate with federal immigration authorities even in cases where an illegal alien has already been arrested or has prior criminal convictions.

Sanctuary policies are a significant problem for ICE. According to ICE records I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, between Oct. 2022 and Feb. 2025, sanctuary jurisdictions failed to honor ICE detainer notices more than 26,000 times.  Nearly 1,700 of those ignored detainers were in Virginia.  Fairfax County alone accounted for more than two-thirds of those cases.

Jalloh is not the only criminal with a violent past who has been protected by Virginia sanctuary policies.  In the period covered in my report, Virginia jails released 75 aliens with convictions or pending charges for sexual assault, 46 with weapons offenses, and 285 with charges related to dangerous drugs. Several individuals released by Virginia jails during this period had pending homicide charges.

It is inevitable that public safety is undermined when law enforcement agencies do not honor ICE detainers.  In 2025, Fairfax County declined to honor an ICE detainer for Marvin Fernando Morales-Ortez, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who had been arrested for assault and brandishing a firearm. ICE requested custody when he was released from jail. The county refused to cooperate. Within a day of his release, Morales-Ortez was arrested for shooting and killing a man in his Reston home.

While sanctuary proponents often argue that cooperation with ICE discourages immigrants from reporting crimes, federal data on crime reporting shows no evidence of this supposed “chilling effect.” Police agencies that routinely work with ICE similarly report no decline in immigrant crime reporting as a result. 

Gov. Spanberger insists that ICE should have to get a judge’s approval before taking custody of a criminal alien upon release, a requirement that Congress deliberately declined to impose for immigration enforcement.  Instead, ICE uses administrative warrants with a statement of probable cause.  Judicial warrants would be an unreasonable requirement that would inject federal judges into routine immigration enforcement, and make immigration enforcement even more cumbersome—without any evidence that ICE is abusing its authority. 

Finally, sanctuary policies are costly for taxpayers.  When criminal aliens are repeatedly released rather than transferred to ICE for removal, they end up cycling through local jails and courts, generating additional arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration costs for taxpayers, not to mention new victims.  Cooperation is relatively cheap; according to Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman, it costs about $4.50 to honor an ICE detainer.

Immigration enforcement is ultimately a federal responsibility. But state and local cooperation brings important public safety benefits, and political leaders should not interfere with ideologically-motivated sanctuary policies.  

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

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