Last week, the United States Department of Homeland Security published a list of 33 sanctuary cities in Virginia. The list has now disappeared.
So much for the list of 20 counties and 13 cities in Virginia that the Trump administration declared are “sanctuary jurisdictions.” Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security removed that page from its website. Steven Haner at the conservative-leaning Thomas Jefferson Institute says the list should have been spiked because it was full of errors.
“From the beginning, this looked to me as an example of shoot, ready, aim; that they really had not done their research before they put out that list, and the list had all kinds of errors on it. It was just wrong, and embarrassingly wrong," Haner says. "So, they took it down, and I give them credit for that.”
Freddy Mejia at the Commonwealth Institute points out that one jurisdiction that was not on the list was Loudoun County, which has a memorandum of understanding with federal immigration officials known as a 287(g) agreement.
“There are multiple levers to try to really force and really strong arm localities to enter into these 287(g) agreements that would basically deputize local law enforcement to enforce the federal immigration work,” Mejia says.
For now, the list of sanctuary jurisdictions has evaporated. But local governments across Virginia are bracing for the next list to come out, and to figure out how they plan on responding when that day arrives.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
