Democrat Trust Policy Leaves Arlington Families Exposed — Police Barred From Calling ICE Even for Felons, Gangs, Traffickers

ARLINGTON COUNTY, Va. — Parents in Arlington County have every reason to fear what Democrat sanctuary rules have done to their neighborhoods. A Sept. 21, 2026 House Judiciary interim staff report documents how the Democrat-run Arlington County Board’s “Trust Policy” now forbids the Arlington County Police Department from initiating contact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement even when officers identify an illegal alien as a violent felon, gang member, human trafficker, or terrorist.

The House Judiciary interim staff report, from Chairman Jim Jordan’s Committee on the Judiciary and Immigration Integrity Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock, treats Arlington as a Virginia case study in Democrat choices that put criminal aliens back on local streets instead of into federal custody — leaving families to live with the risk.

Earlier versions of the Trust Policy already limited status disclosures, refused most ICE detainers, and narrowed ACPD–ICE contact to rare exceptions involving violent felons or aliens reasonably suspected of terrorism or human trafficking. In May 2025, after President Donald Trump took office again, the Democrat-led County Board erased those exceptions. Local reporting and the county’s own updated policy language, cited by the committee, show ACPD is prohibited from calling federal immigration authorities even in the most serious cases.

“In other words,” the interim staff report states, “Arlington County’s new policy protects the worst of the worst of criminal aliens—murderers, terrorists, and sex traffickers—from deportation.” That is not a federal requirement. It is a Democrat local-government decision that deliberately walls off ICE from the worst offenders parents worry about most.

The report’s county data underscore how little cooperation already existed before the May 2025 clampdown: ACPD contacted federal immigration authorities 17 times in 2025, 18 times in 2024, seven times in 2023, and six times in 2022 — in a county where about 26,000 foreign nationals made up roughly 11 percent of the population in 2024, figures the report attributes to the American Immigration Council.

The same Democrat Trust Policy binds the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office. Updated rules prohibit ACSO from honoring ICE detainers that lack a judicial warrant — paperwork the report says is effectively impossible to get in ordinary state-crime custody cases that do not involve a federal offense. From January 2025 through May 2026, ACSO received 310 ICE detainers and honored only two, both with judicial warrants. That is a 0.65 percent compliance rate. Forty-two of the individuals ICE sought already had criminal convictions, according to ICE information provided to the committee.

A detainer is ICE’s formal request that a jail notify the agency before releasing a removable alien and hold the person briefly so officers can take custody in a secure setting. When Democrat sanctuary rules force release instead, the report explains, dangerous foreign-national criminals — including aliens already convicted of serious crimes — walk free and remain able to reoffend among Virginia families.

House Republicans place Arlington inside a national Democrat sanctuary pattern: between October 2022 and early 2026, sanctuary jurisdictions declined at least 41,085 ICE detainers, ICE told the committee. In the first 12 months of President Trump’s second term alone, state and local agencies declined at least 17,864 detainers, including for aliens charged with crimes ranging from sexual assault to murder.

Since January 2026, Judiciary and the immigration subcommittee have sought records from 40 officials in 13 sanctuary jurisdictions. The Arlington packet draws on nonpublic documents, data, and testimony showing local Democrat policy actively shields foreign-national criminals from federal removal.

For mothers and fathers in northern Virginia, the math is not theoretical. Democrat county leaders ordered police not to call ICE for terrorists, traffickers, and gang members. Democrat-aligned custody rules left the sheriff honoring fewer than one percent of ICE detainers. Forty-two of those ignored requests already involved people with convictions. The House Judiciary report says that is how sanctuary politics becomes a public-safety crisis on Arlington streets — and why families feel unprotected.

Email the Arlington County Board of Sueprvisors:
Matt de Ferranti, mdeferranti@arlingtonva.us,
Maureen Coffey, mcoffey@arlingtonva.us,
Susan Cunningham, scunningham@arlingtonva.us,
Julius D. “JD” Spain, Sr., jdspainsr@arlingtonva.us,
Takis P. Karantonis, tkarantonis@arlingtonva.us,

Email the Arlington County School Board:
Miranda Turner, miranda.turner@apsva.us,
Kathleen Clark, kathleen.clark2@apsva.us,
Monique Bryant, monique.bryant@apsva.us,
Zuraya Tapia-Hadley, zuraya.tapiahadley@apsva.us,
Bethany Zecher Sutton, bethany.zechersutton@apsva.us,