Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order this week deputizing state police officers as immigration agents and directing prisons and local law enforcement agencies to collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Under the order, the Virginia State Police will enter into a “Section 287(g)” agreement with ICE, creating a state task force of federally deputized troopers to “assist in the identification and apprehension of criminal illegal immigrants who pose a risk to public safety throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
The executive order directs Virginia’s Department of Corrections to sign a similar agreement with ICE and seeks the full cooperation of local authorities around the Commonwealth.
According to Youngkin’s office, Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes such agreements between the federal immigration enforcement agency and state and local police forces.
The goal, according to Youngkin’s administration, is to target violent offenders who may be in violation of immigration laws.
“Dangerous criminal illegal immigrants should not be let back into our communities to assault, rape and murder. They should be sent back where they came from,” Youngkin said.
However, immigrant advocacy group CASA said in a statement that these agreements have “disproportionately targeted individuals with little or no criminal history.”
“The historical parallels are impossible to ignore. Just as slavecatchers were once authorized to pursue people seeking freedom across state lines, this order authorizes state police and corrections officers to pursue people seeking refuge and opportunity in our Commonwealth,” CASA’s statement said.
The group said research shows immigrant communities have lower crime rates than native-born populations, and these agreements fuel racial profiling and discrimination.
Witnesses and victims of crime who are immigrants, CASA added, will also be afraid to contact police out of fear of being deported.
The Youngkin administration, in its news release announcing the order, said there is a “scourge of dangerous and violent illegal immigrants” in Virginia, and cited the “tragic stories” caused by the release of dangerous criminals who were in this country illegally.
In a section of the order titled “Importance of Initiative,” it cites several cases in Virginia, including a February 2024 crash between an illegal immigrant and an Old Dominion University student that left the student dead, as well as the November 2024 alleged attack and rape of a woman on a Herndon trail.
Those stories, Youngkin’s office said, echo other notorious cases across the nation, such as that of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s murder.
“This Executive Order will make sure we send them back to where they came from,” Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears said.
But the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia said with this order, Youngkin is playing politics.
“For years, Virginia’s governor has been pushing the same dangerous, false narrative as the Trump administration that immigrants commit crime at higher rates than people who were born here, despite the fact that no data exists to support that conclusion,” the ACLU’s statement read.
At the order’s direction, Virginia Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Terrance Cole will be contacting every director, sheriff or other leading official at every local and regional jail in the state to certify their full cooperation with ICE and Virginia State Police’s new task force.
WTOP has reached out to state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, a democrat representing the City of Fairfax and parts of Fairfax County, for comment on the governor’s order.
