Arlington County sheriff ends voluntary cooperation with ICE

Sheriff’s deputies working in the Arlington County jail will no longer voluntarily cooperate with federal immigration officials, outgoing Sheriff Beth Arthur (D) said this week, a move that further disentangles this liberal Northern Virginia locality from the work of immigration enforcement.

The policy change most notably affects how the sheriff’s department communicates with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over undocumented inmates in the Arlington County jail.

Unlike some more conservative counties, Arlington does not honor immigration detainers — requests from ICE to local sheriff’s deputies, asking them to hold certain inmates in jail beyond their scheduled release date. But deputies in Arlington would give ICE a heads up when they were about to release an inmate with a detainer request.

It is because of this practice that “historically, Arlington County jail had been one of the worst places [in the region] to be an immigrant,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, legal director at the Legal Aid Justice Center, which helped push for the change. “You had a low likelihood of actually walking out the door on your release date.”

He said he hopes the changes will reduce the number of immigrants picked up by ICE out of that jail, lowering how many Northern Virginia residents are effectively deported over a drunken-driving arrest or a domestic violence incident before they can be tried.

The move underscores an increasingly common policy in the jails of many liberal cities and suburbs, where municipal orders, activist campaigns and state laws have prompted sheriffs to adopt similar policies that vow they will stop picking up the phone to call ICE.

ICE and its advocates have said these prerelease notifications can help prevent violent criminals from reemerging onto the streets, and Arthur herself had previously told The Washington Post last year she had public safety concerns over ending such a practice.

“I’m between a rock and a hard place,” she said an interview last December. “If I do nothing to notify them that [someone] is going to be released from jail and that person goes out and murders somebody, then what?”

Arlington is reconsidering when to work with ICE. Activists want the county to cut ties entirely.

But many advocates in this liberal county maintained that her office had no business helping to enforce federal immigration law. Calling ICE about inmates, they told her in meetings and letters since then, had only decreased trust in local law enforcement among the county’s large immigrant population.

“We need to make sure that none of the resources in Arlington County are being used to further criminalize people and funnel them more easily to deportation,” said Danny Cendejas, a community organizer with the activist group La ColectiVA.

Arthur — who is set to retire as sheriff next month — had limited prerelease notifications earlier this year to only inmates who had been arrested on a felony charge. In cutting further voluntary ties to ICE, she did not offer much detailed explanation for her decision.

“I pride myself on making informed decisions that benefit the communities I represent, which has led me to making [these] changes,” Arthur wrote Tuesday in a letter to advocacy groups that had lobbied her for this specific policy.

Jose Quiroz, a deputy sheriff who will take over for Arthur on a temporary basis following her retirement, has announced his candidacy to assume the position full-time and has received her endorsement. He is expected to continue to honor this policy change.

The move places Arlington in line with Fairfax County, where Sheriff Stacey A. Kincaid (D) took a similar step in June. Alexandria’s jail continues to provide prerelease notifications to ICE, according to Sandoval-Moshenberg.

Under Arthur’s policy changes, sheriff’s deputies in Arlington must continue to honor judicially signed warrants, although ICE is not known to secure these often for jail inmates.

They must also obey federal and Virginia state law that requires some limited cooperation: Namely, when someone is booked into jail on a felony charge, their personal information is required to be entered into a database that can be accessed by ICE.

Arthur’s announcement follows similar changes to disentangle Arlington from working with ICE. County lawmakers in July adopted a “trust policy” that severely limits the instances in which much of the rest of Arlington government, including police, can cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

Arlington adopts policy limiting cooperation with immigration officials

The board’s new policy, which is meant to encourage undocumented residents in the Northern Virginia suburb to seek help from police and use other government resources, affirms that residents of the county can access public services regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.

And, while it bars police from asking residents about that status, it does not bar Arlington police from working in any way with ICE.

Because the Arlington sheriff is elected independently of county board members, it did not affect Arthur or her department. While drafting and discussing the “trust policy,” lawmakers said they could not specifically instruct the sheriff to take action.

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