Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin has directed the state’s police, sheriffs, and jails to cooperate with President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Youngkin signed an Executive Order on Thursday that “directs the Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections to sign Section 287(g) agreements with ICE.”
It also directs “the Secretary of Public Safety & Homeland Security to request a certification from local and regional jail authorities confirming their full cooperation with ICE and that they will cooperate with the Section 287(g) VSP Task Force.”
The state’s jails hold almost 1,000 deportable migrants, and “nine out of every ten of these [ICE] detainer [requests] are for violent criminals,” the Executive Order says.
The federal 287(g) program trains and authorizes police forces to link their local arrests with ICE. Many police forces and mayors are reluctant to join the 287(g) program because of opposition from local Democrats, business groups, and pro-migration activists, and because they fear risky lawsuits by pro-migration groups.
During former President Joe Biden’s presidency, many GOP politicians quietly opposed the 287(g) program because of closed-door opposition by business groups who profited from Biden’s inflow of roughly 9 million illegal migrant workers, consumers, and renters.
But many Republican governors — such as Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida — and legislatures are now directing their states’ sheriffs and police departments to enroll in the 287(g) program.
“As Governor, protecting our citizens is my foremost responsibility and today we are taking action that will make Virginia safer by removing dangerous criminal illegal immigrants from our Commonwealth,” Youngkin said Thursday, adding:
This order will allow Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections to partner with President Trump’s administration on federal immigration enforcement. 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.
“We’ve seen too many tragic stories after dangerous criminals in this country illegally were put back on the streets, and this Executive Order will make sure we send them back to where they came from,” said Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.
Youngkin’s order included horror stories from Virginia:
In February 2024, an Old Dominion University student was killed in a car crash by an illegal immigrant who previously had multiple run-ins with the law, having previously been ordered deported six years earlier. That same month, an illegal immigrant sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in Campbell County. In November 2024, a woman was attacked and raped by an illegal immigrant from Honduras while hiking along a trail in Herndon. Reports indicate that the man had 29 encounters with police dating back to 2017, ranging from drug possession to indecent exposure and public nudity.
Read Yougkin’s Executive Order 47 here.
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