President Donald Trump is removing people without legal status from the United States, and Virginia, at a breakneck pace.
It’s brought federal agents into communities across the Commonwealth, including Chesterfield County where more than a dozen people have been removed in recent days. They’re targeting folks like the one mother of three U.S. born children who lives outside of D.C.
We’re only referring to her as “the mother” because she fears deportation. Her husband, and the father of two of her children, who we’re not naming for similar reasons, was deported in front of those kids last month.
“When my children wake up at night, they say ‘where’s my dad?’ It’s really hard for them, they’re crying out for their dad,” she told Radio IQ with help from a translator.
The mother is 50. She moved to the U.S. from El Salvador about 20 years ago. When she entered the country, she was given a phone number to contact immigration authorities. She called it, but they didn’t have instructions in Spanish.
She ended up in a D.C. suburb where she’s been cleaning houses and made a life for herself and her family.
But after her husband's deportation, she is terrified for the fate of her children and herself.
I asked if she had a message for the governor of Virginia.
“We came here to work and for a better life. We’re not delinquents,” she pleaded. “The land belongs to God. We’re all equal. We came here to work.”
As for the response from Virginia’s current governor, Glenn Younkin
“We’re going to assist federal agents in every aspect of what they’re doing,” the governor said at a recent event in Hanover.
Youngkin said Virginia has helped with over 1,500 “arrests of gang members and drug traffickers” from the Commonwealth since Trump took office, though Radio IQ has been unable to confirm those numbers despite repeated requests for comment from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Recent research from the right-leaning CATO Institute suggests nonviolent offenders make up 93% of the over 200,000 people taken by the federal agency since last October; 65% have no criminal record at all. Half of those taken by the agency who did have a criminal conviction on their record fell into three categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.
When pressed on whether someone was still worth deporting if they didn’t have a criminal record, Youngkin reiterated his promise to support ICE.
“If someone is arrested in the U.S., in Virginia, and they are here illegally, then ICE will pick them up and we’ll assist them in that process,” he said.
I also posed the mother’s comments, “we’re not delinquents, we’re just here to work,” to Virginia’s two gubernatorial candidates.
Current Lieutenant Governor and Republican gubernatorial hopeful Winsome Earle-Sears is the child of a Jamaican immigrant and has said her father came to the country with less than $2 in his pocket. Earle-Sears responded to the mother's concerns this way:
“You said you came to America like my dad did, like I did, but now you are doing heinous acts to the point of rape and murder,” Earle-Sears said.
When asked about the removal of nonviolent offenders, the candidate said former President Barack Obama did it too.
“Because, you know, he has deported more people than even Trump has,” she said.
A Marine Corps veteran, Earle-Sears said she remembered going to immigration court hearings and answering civics questions as part of her eventual naturalization.
“I don’t know about my dad’s process, I was a kid, eventually I raised my hand,” she said of the day she chose U.S. citizenship.
Earle-Sears said her family entered the country “the right way.”
“My father came here legally, waited his turn, said he wouldn’t be a detriment to taxpayers… [and] proved that I wouldn’t be a detriment to taxpayers,” she added.
Former Congresswoman and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger responded to the mother's concerns this way:
“A cruel response to a broken immigration system is not the way we fix a broken immigration system,” she said.
Spanberger noted immigration is, at its heart, a federal issue, and she said she worked on bipartisan immigration reform in Congress, though her effort never made it out of the House during her time in office.
She said those who break the law may rightly face deportation, but she disagreed with Trump’s methods.
“Arresting a mom and deporting a mom who's been working and likely paying taxes is not how we make the country more safe,” she said. “We see that every day with the reports of who they’re detaining, deporting, sending off to foreign prisons.”
“Stories like that [the mother’s] are far too common and an indication of a broken system,” she added. “It’s not about keeping communities safe.”
Spanberger also expressed concerns about stretching local law enforcement’s duties to include immigration enforcement.
"That is a major burden on law enforcement across the country, and it precludes them from doing other police activities,” she said.
The candidates’ comments have become all the more relevant as reports of Chesterfield County’s courthouse becoming a destination for ICE agents have hit the news.
During a Tuesday morning visit to the courthouse by Radio IQ and the Virginia Scope, ICE activity was witnessed, though much of the action was kept out of the public's view, either in closed-off rooms or behind walled-off tents.
Chesterfield County Sheriff Karl Leonard later confirmed to the Scope that federal agents had detained 14 individuals over the course of three days. Details on those detained were not available, but an attorney in the courthouse hallway who asked not to be identified expressed concern for both the justice system and victims of crimes if ICE sweeps up defendants before they face justice.
Leonard expressed similar concerns to the Scope.
“I am concerned about the unintended consequences of these actions in that these actions will deter some victims and witnesses from actually coming to court in fear of being detained,” the self-identified Trump voter said. “Which will result in court cases not being able to go forward. If that happens, victims will have their justice denied.”
Leonard told the Scope he wouldn’t sign a 287(g) agreement with ICE either, something Youngkin has demanded. But only a handful of Virginia law enforcement agencies have so far.
One sheriff told Radio IQ on background they feared a federal takeover of their resources, but he also said his deputies would work with ICE anyway, no agreement needed.
Immigration is not a new issue on the campaign trail in Virginia. Republican campaigns from Ed Gillespie in 2017 to Hung Cao in 2024, singled out migrants as dangerous individuals. And those campaigns lost, sometimes by double digits.
The question remains if it will work this time, even as the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports one Chesterfield detainee was swept up while trying to pay his taxes.
Virginia voters will decide in the fall.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
