Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan was at the Chesterfield County Courthouse Monday morning.
McClellan’s district includes the Richmond suburb where federal immigration agents have arrested over a dozen people inside the court complex, but she’s also raising doubts about numbers coming from Governor Glenn Youngkin’s office.
Youngkin proudly declared a partnership between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Virginia State Police was a massive success, detaining 2,500 “violent illegals.” But Richmond-area Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan isn’t buying it.
“I don’t believe it. Until you show me, all 2500, all of their cases, what they were convicted of. You are innocent until proven guilty,” McClellan said Monday morning. “I think the governor either is not doing his due diligence to ask the right questions and is just parroting what he’s been told at best.”
Youngkin has said he fully supports the Trump administration’s immigration efforts, but he, ICE and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia have all failed to respond to multiple requests for a list of those removed by his federal-state enforcement task force.
Joanna Dreby is a University of Albany professor who researches the impact immigration enforcement has on families. She’s been using ICE Data to study the topic since the 2000s. While she said data collection between presidential administration changes, she’s never had as much trouble tracking ICE detainees as she has had now.
“We’re seeing new levels of that since January that I have not seen, like the case in Virginia where they’re simply not releasing any information," Dreby told Radio IQ. It’s distressing."
Dreby's work usually deals with the lasting impacts of ICE enforcement on families, such as how the deportation of a migrant parent can impact a US-born child. She said the more aggressive the tactics the more trauma can be developed.
"Every time somebody is picked up in a community there's rippling effect where all sorts of kids are freaking out," she said, noting removal without informing family members, such as what has been alleged at Chesterfield court, is among those trauma-inducing activities. "Due to those fears you see anxiety and depression rising in those children, and their families isolate. They stop going to school, they stop going to church."
Back in Chesterfield County, Court Clerk Amanda Pohl said ICE’s presence is ongoing.
“[People targeted by ICE are] coming in for minor offenses, they’re trying to have their day in court, and ICE is taking them,” Pohl told Radio IQ.
"[ICE officers] are sitting there, waiting to see who speaks a foreign language, who needs an interpreter, and then they're following those people out of court to question and detain them," she said. "Not everybody has an ICE detainer."
Pohl said it's led to folks who fear removal, even U.S. citizens who speak English as a second language and court translators, to skip court dates out of fear of being improperly removed from the country.
Additional recent reporting from the Richmond Times-Dispatch showed local police are also seeing a drop in 911 calls from communities with migrant populations.
“I am sure there are women who are being abused in Southwood who are not calling the Richmond Police Department,” Richmond Police Chief Rick Edwards told the RTD. “And that concerns me greatly.”
In a written statement, Chesterfield-area state Senator Glenn Sturtevant downplayed concerns about ICE removing individuals from courthouses.
“Some folks claim the sky is falling,” Sturtevant said. “We should welcome ICE to continue its mission in keeping our Commonwealth safe.”
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
