‘This is horrible for Virginia families’: Immigration advocates call on Youngkin to reverse executive order on ICE removal efforts
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RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Virginia immigration advocates have responded to Gov. Glenn Youngkin's recent executive order directing state police and corrections officers to participate in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts.
"There's going to be a bunch of bad things happening, coming from this executive order," said Christian Martinez Lemus, research and policy analyst for CASA Virginia, an immigration advocacy group. "We're asking the governor to have a better change of heart."
Under Executive Order 47, Virginia State Police (VSP) will enter an agreement with ICE to create a task force of federally deputized state troopers. Those troopers will then assist ICE in the identification and apprehension of "dangerous criminal illegal immigrants."
For the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC), through a similar agreement with ICE, officers will be trained and assigned as Designated Immigration Officers (DIOs).
Virginia's Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security will be instructed to contact every director, sheriff or other official in charge of all local or regional jails in the Commonwealth and request a certification of confirmation confirming their full cooperation with ICE.
"This order will allow Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections to partner with President Trump’s administration on federal immigration enforcement," Youngkin said in a press release on Thursday, Feb. 27. "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.”
Such collaboration is made possible through Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which was added in 1996. It authorizes ICE to enter into agreements with local and state law enforcement to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
Prince William County had a 287(g) agreement with ICE that ended in 2020.
"We saw the horrible things that [Section] 287 did in the past," Martinez Lemus said. "Whether someone was an immigrant or whether someone was just a person of color ... they were targeted, as well, from this program."
The VADOC provided 8News with the following statement on Youngkin's executive order:
The Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) will work swiftly and decisively to implement the directives established by Governor Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order 47. The VADOC and its more than 11,000 employees remain committed to ensuring long-term public safety for all Virginians by providing effective incarceration, supervision, and evidence-based re-entry services. Kyle Gibson, spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Corrections
8News asked the department for further details into what the training of corrections officers into DIOs will entail and was told that our inquiry was being processed.
VSP provided the following statement:
"The Virginia State Police is currently taking measures to comply with Executive Order 47 issued by Governor Glenn Youngkin today, February 27,2025, and is in the process of entering into a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This will provide for a Virginia State Police Task Force with a select group of federally deputized officers."
“Virginia State Police’s mission is to provide for a secure Commonwealth,” said Colonel Matthew D. Hanley, Superintendent of Virginia State Police. “As will be the case here, we frequently partner with other agencies to support the Governor's initiatives on violent crime.” Matthew Demlein, spokesperson for Virginia State Police
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia weighed in on the matter, as well:
"We're deeply disturbed – but not surprised – by today's anti-immigrant executive order. Virginia's governor has for years 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. It's disappointing that Gov. Youngkin is planning to throw good money after bad by wasting Virginians' tax dollars terrorizing local communities. Executive orders like this play politics with people's lives, waste taxpayer dollars, and ignore the fact that immigrants have been an indispensable part of Virginia for decades." Alexandra Werner-Winslow, spokesperson for the ACLU of Virginia
For a full read of Executive Order 47, click here.
