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.
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.
A crowd of 100 new citizens from 95 different countries was indeed pumped up Friday as former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor and former bodybuilder, delivered the keynote address at George Washington’s Mount Vernon during a Fourth of July naturalization ceremony.
Employees of the hallowed estate estimated about 1,000 attendees were on hand for the festivities, with members of the public joining media members and families of new citizens.
A West Virginia man is no longer facing jail time after being accused of extorting a woman from Annandale over her citizenship status.
The Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office decided last Wednesday (June 11) not to prosecute the 51-year-old man, according to court records, though no reason was explicitly provided.
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.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors recently marked the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and saluted the Vietnamese American community’s vital role in the local area and nation.
“We honor all the contributions that the Vietnamese American community makes to Fairfax County on an everyday basis,” Board Chairman Jeff McKay said when presenting a resolution at an April 22 meeting. “Anywhere you go in Fairfax County, you can see this.”
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).
