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Tag: u.s. customs and immigration enforcement

  • Gov. Spanberger ends ICE agreement involving Virginia State Police and corrections officers – WTOP News

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    The agreement — which stems from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration —  had effectively placed state law enforcement under federal control and supervision to conduct civil immigration enforcement. 

    This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury. 

    Gov. Abigail Spanberger has formally ended an agreement with the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement that had allowed Virginia State Police troopers and Virginia Department of Corrections officers to assist ICE.

    The agreement — which stems from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration —  had effectively placed state law enforcement under federal control and supervision to conduct civil immigration enforcement.

    Ending the agreements was a campaign promise of Spanberger’s last year when she said tasking state and local law enforcement to help with federal law enforcement was a “misuse of those resources.”

    She said she’d rather law enforcement focus on its core duties than serve as deputies to ICE.

    Executive Order 12 builds on her earlier day-one executive order that gave her the option to end the agreement that Order 12 now rescinds.

    The order directs all state law enforcement agencies to review policies, training and practices to ensure they align with standards of protecting human life and to “not engage in fear-based policing, enforcement theater, or actions that create barriers to people seeking assistance in their time of need.”

    Spanberger pointed to national conversations around ICE’s tactics in a meeting with the news media on Wednesday. As President Donald Trump’s administration has had the agency hyper-focused on Minneapolis in recent weeks, American citizens like Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been killed by agents.

    “I think it has brought the conversation to the forefront,” Spanberger said of how their deaths helped inspire her new order.

    Drawing on her own background in law enforcement, she emphasized that the order is intended to reinforce accountability, public service, and safety.

    “I think it’s extraordinarily important to make sure that we are celebrating, and honoring and recognizing the strong vetting, the strong training, and the incredibly high standards that here in the commonwealth of Virginia, we hold our law enforcement agencies to,” Spanberger said. “We want to make sure that we’re making a clear line in the sand about what is expected of our law enforcement officials.”

    Republicans, however, offered a sharply different view.

    Sen. Glenn Sturtevant, R-Chesterfield said in reaction Wednesday that he believes the order reflects Spanberger “putting politics over public safety.”

    As of late last year, the majority of the thousands of people detained by ICE in Virginia had no criminal histories.

    With Virignia’s legislature and governorship now under Democratic control — at a time when  President Donald Trump has targeted Democratic-led states — immigration advocates and civil rights groups have argued the commonwealth could become the next focal point for ICE enforcement.

    Some Republican lawmakers have suggested Trump could retaliate against Virginia over Spanberger’s actions. Del. Karen Hamilton, R-Culpeper, speculated in a recent social media post that the president could withhold federal funding following Spanberger’s previous ICE-related order — a move Youngkin once threatened against localities that declined to cooperate with ICE.

    When asked Wednesday whether he believes Trump might retaliate, Sturtevant said, “we’ll see.”

    “At the end of the day,” he added, “we know we have criminal illegal aliens here in Virginia. We have federal law enforcement, whose job it is to go and identify, find, and deport these individuals. We had been working constructively with those federal partners to do that.”

    Spanberger, meanwhile, said her order does not prohibit cooperation between state agencies and ICE under limited circumstances, such as participation in special task forces or when ICE presents  judicial warrants requesting assistance.

    “That’s a clear delineation,” she said. “But taking Virginia law enforcement, state agency personnel, and basically giving them over to ICE, is something that ends today.”

    Virginia Mercury reporter Shannon Heckt contributed to this story.

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    Jose Umana

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  • How will DC’s law enforcement surge be remembered? – WTOP News

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    Since August, Washington has grappled with a federal blow to its autonomy after President Donald Trump declared a crime emergency in the nation’s capital. Hundreds of National Guard members began to roam the city streets and D.C. police began working with federal law enforcement agencies. But where does the city stand now?

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    How will DC’s law enforcement surge be remembered?

    This story is part of WTOP’s series “Five stories that defined the DC-area in 2025.” You can hear it on air all this week and read it online.

    During a news conference on Aug. 11, President Donald Trump vowed to address crime in D.C. He promised to get rid of what he described as the city’s “slums,” activated hundreds of National Guard members to patrol D.C. streets and told Attorney General Pam Bondi she had control of the city’s police force.

    Trump similarly described his aim to address vandalism, potholes and medians on city streets and homeless encampments.

    In doing so, Trump invoked Section 740 of D.C.’s Home Rule Act.

    In the months that followed, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had to walk a tightrope to navigate the federal intervention. She pushed back on the assertion that it was a federal takeover, instead calling it a “surge” of law enforcement in the nation’s capital.

    Before the crime emergency was announced, city leaders maintained that violent crime had already been falling. The city’s crime data, though, has been the subject of congressional and Department of Justice investigations.

    The White House, meanwhile, is commending the surge for making D.C. safer. During the emergency, it released crime data from the day prior daily.

    “If you were to talk to any police chief in the country, they’re always going to want more resources,” said Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow at Cato Institute. “I don’t think that there’s any of them that would turn down additional money, especially money to hire additional officers.”

    But, Eddington said, there are federal grant programs in place for that.

    “The National Guard is not one of those resources that should be used,” he said.

    National Guard descends on DC

    Protesters, police, and National Guard troops congregate at the entrance to Union Station in D.C., where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance visited Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

    In the days after the crime emergency was declared, hundreds of National Guard members arrived on city streets. They worked near Metro stations and parks. Some helped collect garbage and assist with maintenance work.

    Federal law enforcement worked with D.C. government agencies to coordinate the clearing of homeless encampments across the city.

    At the same time, some residents reported a rise in masked federal officers working in their communities.

    During appearances in late August, Bowser stressed the city didn’t ask for the federal assistance. But she said the federal help meant more resources, resulting in more traffic stops and more illegal gun seizures.

    Bowser criticized agents wearing masks and “ICE terrorizing communities.” She described having National Guard troops, especially those from other states, in the city as something “not working.”

    Asked for comment about the law enforcement surge’s impact, a spokesperson from Bowser’s office referred WTOP to those prior remarks.

    Meanwhile, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said Trump transformed D.C. “from a crime-ridden mess into a beautiful, clean, safe city. Federal law enforcement officers, in close coordination with local partners, have removed countless dangerous criminals and illegal drugs from the streets, arrested MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members, and rescued missing children.”

    Federal government declines extension of declaration

    Congress declined to extend the president’s crime emergency, which expired in September.

    Bowser issued a mayor’s order, outlining how D.C. would continue to collaborate with the federal government after the 30-day declaration. It created a “Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center,” responsible for managing the city’s response to Trump’s Safe and Beautiful Task Force.

    The order outlined the agencies D.C. would continue to collaborate with. It didn’t mention U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the National Guard.

    D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, hoping to end the National Guard’s deployment, in early September. The legal battle, though, is ongoing.

    As of Dec. 14, a spokesman for D.C.’s Joint Task Force said there were 2,606 troops deployed to the city. Pending court rulings, troops could remain in D.C. through February.

    Trump called for hundreds more troops in the city after two were shot near Farragut Square during the week of Thanksgiving. Twenty-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom died, and Sgt. Andrew Wolfe is still recovering.

    For a short time after the November shooting, D.C. police worked overtime patrolling city streets alongside the National Guard. That was no longer the case as of mid-December, a D.C. police spokesman told WTOP.

    Surge still lingers in DC

    Members of the National Guard patrol at Gallery Place Metro Station on Dec. 3, 2025 in D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    With signs of the surge still evident across the city, residents have conflicting feelings about its legacy.

    Taylor Helle moved to D.C. this summer for an internship, and enjoyed the city so much she stayed. She said it felt like “the safest city I’ve ever been in.”

    “I don’t think it’s really been that necessary, and I haven’t felt a lot safer because of it,” Helle said. “It just feels like there’s better things they can be doing with their time.”

    Dylan Vanek, meanwhile, said troops on D.C. streets crossed a line, “because what separates us from Russia or China or Iran is civil liberties. How can we claim to be better if we have troops on our streets policing civilians?”

    A federal government employee, who asked not to be named because she’s not authorized to speak publicly, said the surge and Guard presence “gave me a sense of calm.”

    “I just get a sense (that) people are a little calmer now,” the woman said. “To me, you don’t see a lot of foolishness going on. Even homeless people — it’s just a calm. I don’t understand it, but it’s a nice calm.”

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    Scott Gelman

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