Law Enforcement Official Suspended for Turning Illegal Alien Over to ICE Officials in Virginia
Shane Trejo
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A law enforcement official has been suspended in Fairfax County, VA for holding a driver at the scene of an accident so they could be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
Fairfax County police Chief Ed Roessler released a statement on Tuesday that the officer is being suspended for his behavior during a Sept. 21 traffic accident that took place in the Alexandria section of the Harrison Lane and South Kings Highway.
After arriving to the accident scene, he officer found that one individual was not in possession of a drivers license. He ran their information and found that the individual had skipped a deportation hearing and was wanted by ICE. He contacted an ICE agent, and the illegal alien was detained.
Roessler claims that the illegal alien should not have been turned over to ICE because the illegal was not being detained for violating the law, despite the fact that the individual was driving without the possession of a license.
The offending officer has been “relieved of all law enforcement duties pending the outcome of this investigation.” He is suspected of violating county police protocol which states that if “the individual is not in custody or being taken into custody for any other violation of law, officers shall not … take the individual into custody based solely upon the [Immigration Violators File] hit.”
Roessler maintains that his officers are taught in the academy that “we do not enforce nor detain for administrative warrants, and we have no authority to enforce federal law.”
“Our county is one of the most diverse counties in the nation and no one should have the perception that FCPD is acting as a civil immigration agent for ICE. This matter damages our reputation and the longstanding policy that I have stated many times that our officers shall not act as immigration agents,” Roessler said, making the agenda behind the officer’s suspension very clear.
Fairfax was officially given sanctuary county status last year:
Fairfax County’s jail will no longer comply with federal immigration authorities’ detainer requests on illegal immigrants, the sheriff announced Tuesday, joining the number of communities that are balking at assisting President Trump on immigration.
Sheriff Stacey A. Kincaid said her department will still share information on people booked into the jail with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But it will not hold them beyond their regular release time, she said.
She gave ICE 120 days’ notice, meaning the new refusal policy will kick in May 23.
“We found it expedient to no longer have an agreement that required us to extend our resources beyond these obligations,” the sheriff said.
Fairfax County is the largest jurisdiction in Virginia and the largest in the Washington region. More than 30 percent of its 1.1 million people are immigrants.
Immigrant-rights groups cheered the announcement, but said the county should go even further toward sanctuary status.
“This is a victory for the immigrant residents in Fairfax County,” said Michelle LaRue, director of the Virginia office for CASA, a major immigrant-rights advocate. “This is step in the right direction and a way to restore trust within the immigrant community.”
If Fairfax County isn’t careful, they will end up like adjacent Montgomery County, MD. Montgomery has seen at least nine instances of illegal aliens committing sex crimes since July as the county has become a hot spot of sorts for third-world rapists since declaring itself a sanctuary county during the summer.
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