FIRST ON FOX: Records obtained by a conservative legal group show Fairfax County, Virginia, declined to transfer 615 illegal immigrants to ICE over the past 16 months, while turning over just 11.
Fairfax County â whose board hosts only one Republican supervisor for what is the most populous jurisdiction in the Old Dominion â formally designated itself a sanctuary jurisdiction in 2021 after passing the Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy or “Trust Policy” in shorthand.
America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the county seeking records from the office of Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Ann Kincaid, who testified at a contentious House hearing earlier this spring on Fairfax’s reluctance to cooperate with federal law enforcement.
The data, which was obtained directly from a Fairfax County Sheriffs Office document, showed that for the entirety of 2025, Kincaids office refused to transfer 448 illegal immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security for processing and instead only turned over a total of nine to ICE. During the first four months of 2026, Fairfax declined to transfer another 167 illegal immigrants, while turning over only two.
WATCH: ANGEL MOM TURNS TABLES ON SANCTUARY POLITICIANS WITH BASIC QUESTION ABOUT THEIR PRIORITIES
Since then, county policy has barred law enforcement from honoring ICE civil detainers or otherwise assisting with federal immigration enforcement.
America First Legal (AFL), which first obtained the data, placed much of the blame on Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephen Descano, who sat beside Kincaid at the recent hearing and faced sharp questioning from Republicans over his prosecutorial discretion in cases involving illegal immigrants arrested in the county.
AFL said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital that Fairfax’s overall framework encourages recidivism by illegal immigrant offenders and has directly led to several gruesome cases, including the murder of Fredericksburg, Virginia, woman Stephanie Minter, whose alleged killer is an illegal immigrant from West Africa with a lengthy criminal record in Fairfax County.
AFL noted that Descano is under investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division over claims U.S. citizens are effectively discriminated against because of the prosecutor’s stated preferential policies, which appeared on his campaign pages and elsewhere and were highlighted by Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock, R-Calif., and others during the hearing.
The group pointed to fatal stabbings, the alleged assault of a woman on the Washington & Old Dominion Trail â a popular rail trail spanning from Washington, D.C., to Purcellville that has long been considered safe â and other crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants who, it said, received light sentences
