Dozens of protestors last night (Thursday) held a candlelight vigil to protest recent apprehensions of multiple Fairfax County residents by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the Hybla Valley area.
Three unidentified men along the Richmond Highway (Route 1) corridor were detained by ICE on Nov. 22, according to Tenants and Workers United, which hosted the vigil outside a local church.
Marianella Funes, a community organizer for Tenants and Workers United, said that the vigil was meant to express love and solidarity for communities living in fear.
“Immigrants are a vital part of the workforce and a fundamental component of the country’s economy,” Funes said. “Current rhetoric criminalizes our communities and portrays us as the cause of the nation’s problems.”
Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck spoke at the vigil, and said that in many instances, ICE is arresting peaceful individuals. He encouraged residents to visit the Fairfax County website for more information, including help on receiving legal aid.
“This is incredibly disruptive,” Storck told FFXnow. “Many of these people are peaceful, and are important members of our community.”
Based in the City of Alexandria, Tenants and Workers United has joined city leaders in the past to condemn local ICE activity, including the arrest of 15 men who were working on a roof in the city’s Arlandria neighborhood in August.
ICE did not release any information on the arrests of the three men apprehended on Nov. 22. According to Tenants and Workers United, the men were arrested while working, one of them while selling coconuts along Richmond Highway.
FFXnow has reached out to ICE for more information.
While detailed local-level data is limited, ICE has highlighted several individual cases in Fairfax County this year:
- In January, a man was arrested by immigration officers after getting arrested for driving while intoxicated
- In January, a 46-year-old man was arrested
- ICE announced in May that it arrested three “alien offenders” on April 21 in Annandale and Alexandria
- In April, a 34-year-old man was arrested in Chantilly
- In May, a 26-year-old man was arrested after multiple charges against him were dropped by the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney
- In July, a 25-year-old man with an extensive criminal history was arrested
- In October, a 27-year-old man with an allegedly “extensive criminal history” was arrested in Fairfax
Virginia reportedly saw the county’s biggest spike in immigration arrests during the first five months of 2025 compared to 2024, with Fairfax County seeing almost twice as many as any other locality in the state.
Most of the people taken into custody by ICE during the second Trump administration have had no criminal record.
In Fairfax County, federal immigration agents have reportedly conducted raids at local apartment complexes, among other sites, and detained people visiting the county courthouse as well as the immigration court in Annandale.
This summer, immigrant rights advocates protested allegedly “degrading” conditions at an ICE administrative office in Chantilly, where people arrested during the federal government’s takeover of D.C. were reportedly being detained. Northern Virginia elected officials who later visited the office said conditions seemed to have improved, though organizers with La ColectiVA and the Free Them All VA coalition expressed skepticism.
