Fairfax County school leaders are paying careful attention to start-of-school enrollment figures, attempting to determine if the Trump administration’s immigration policies are leading some families to keep their children at home.
“Some students are a bit reluctant to be in school at this time,” Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid told school board members during a Sept. 25 report on the first month of classes.
Conditions at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Chantilly have improved in recent weeks, four of Northern Virginia’s federal legislators say.
Sen. Mark Warner, as well as Reps. James Walkinshaw, Suhas Subramanyam and Don Beyer, visited the facility last Friday (Sept. 26) “after a month of attempting to gain access.”
Protestors filled the sidewalks around the Route 50 and Stonecroft Blvd intersection in Chantilly yesterday (Wednesday), rallying against a nearby ICE facility with reportedly inhumane conditions.
Stories emerged in recent weeks of dire conditions inside ICE’s Washington Field Office, where immigrants picked up during the Trump administration’s takeover of D.C. are being detained.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Chantilly field office, typically used for administrative proceedings, is being turned into a “makeshift” detention facility, dozens of immigrant rights advocacy groups say.
With arrests surging during the ongoing federal takeover of D.C., ICE has begun detaining individuals for “several days at a time” in a holding room intended to keep people just for a few hours during processing, according to organizations in the Free Them All VA Coalition.
Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano took a swing at the federal government yesterday (Wednesday), claiming that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is making it harder for prosecutors to effectively do their jobs.
“The first thing that I hear in our community over and over again is, not only does the federal government focus on fearmongering around crime, but they’re taking it a step further now by actually creating a culture of fear around law enforcement,” Descano said.
The Trump administration has released a new list of localities and states it considers “sanctuary jurisdictions,” and Fairfax County is no longer on it.
The Justice Department identified some three dozen states, cities and counties as so-called sanctuary jurisdictions on Tuesday (Aug. 5), two months after the federal government quietly removed a much longer list that included many localities that support the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies.
Facing funding threats at both the state and federal levels, Fairfax County leaders have publicly maintained confidence in their policies banning voluntary cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
As President Donald Trump’s administration began ramping up ICE activities to support his campaign threats of mass deportations, however, the Fairfax County Police Department quietly revised its policy governing officer interactions with immigrants.
Fairfax County and hundreds of other localities across the country were labeled “sanctuary jurisdictions” last week by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for limiting their cooperation with federal immigration officials.
The department accused the localities on the list — which was published on its website last Thursday (May 29) before apparently being removed over the weekend — of obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from enforcing federal immigration laws, stating that they will all receive formal notices of non-compliance.
More than a dozen international students at George Mason University have recently had their visas terminated or revoked by the federal government, the university says.
The U.S. departments of state and homeland security apparently changed the statuses of 15 students without any involvement by or prior notice to university officials, GMU President Gregory Washington and Vice President for University Life Rose Pascarell told the community yesterday (Tuesday).
In response to reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeting international students on college campuses, George Mason University (GMU) faculty are calling on the school to step up its protection of students, teachers and staff.
The George Mason University chapter of the American Association of University Presidents (GMU-AAUP) delivered a resolution signed by 228 members of the school community to the university’s administration on March 31.
