Cheryl Minter, mother of a woman murdered at a Fairfax County, Virginia, bus stop, said county officials put an illegal immigrant over her daughter’s safety, as she pleaded for help from Congress on Thursday.
Stephanie Minter was stabbed to death in February, and authorities have charged an illegal immigrant, Abdul Jalloh, who’d been given numerous breaks by county officials over the course of more than 30 previous charges involving rape, stabbings and assaults.
“I am here because the system failed my daughter,” Ms. Minter told lawmakers. “Care for one group should not be a danger for another.”
That was a reference to Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano, the county’s elected prosecutor, whose office has a written policy urging lenient charging decisions and cushier plea deals to migrants to prevent them from facing deportation.
Mr. Descano, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee alongside Ms. Minter, expressed his sorrow for the tragedy and vowed to prosecute Mr. Jalloh.
But he said he doesn’t want to have his office be seen as helping federal immigration authorities, particularly in a county where three in 10 residents are immigrants.
“Our policy of not diverting our resources to federal immigration enforcement also makes our communities safer,” Mr. Descano said. “If victims and witnesses believe my office will report them to ICE, they will not trust us.”
Jason Miyares, former attorney general in Virginia, said Mr. Descano wasn’t telling the full story.
He said Mr. Descano regularly cuts breaks for immigrants, keeping them off the radar of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That included the release of Hyrum Baquedano-Rodriguez, a Honduran illegal immigrant who was initially charged with breaking into a home and trying to abduct and “defile” a 4-year-old in 2023. Mr. Descano’s office reduced the charges and eventually tried to reach a plea deal that called for less than two years in prison.
When two county judges rejected the deal, calling it a danger to safety, Mr. Descano dropped the charges altogether and blamed the judge for refusing to accept the plea deal.
On Thursday, he said the case had evidentiary problems and distanced himself from the decisions, saying while his office handled the issue, he wasn’t the lead prosecutor.
A relative alerted ICE to Mr. Rodriguez’s release, and it swooped in to arrest him.
The case irked Rep. Brad Knott, North Carolina Republican.
“Quit defending the indefensible,” he said to Mr. Descano. “You’re a coward.”
Mr. Descano recently pulled a statement from his campaign website where he bragged about cutting immigrants a deal.
“If two people commit the same crime, but only one’s punishment includes deportation, that’s a perversion of justice and not a reflection of the values of Fairfax County,” he said in a statement that remained posted for six years.
On Thursday, he sought to explain why that was taken down weeks ago after he was directed to appear before Congress. He said his campaign statement wasn’t binding on his office.
“That was a campaign statement I made before I was commonwealth’s attorney,” he said. “I could not believe that people were so obtuse that they could not realize the difference between a campaign statement and an office policy.”
“This is almost laughable,” retorted Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican.
Mr. Descano then read the office’s official policy, which ordered his prosecutors to “consider immigration consequences” in charging and plea decisions.
He said that’s meant to protect legal immigrants accused of relatively minor crimes.
Mr. Miyares, though, said it’s tough to square that with the outcomes from Mr. Descano’s office.
“He may claim this has no impact on his charging decisions, but if you look, time and time again … there is a volume of cases where he has made a conscious decision to underprosecute and essentially treat illegal immigrants with greater deference than he would an American citizen,” Mr. Miyares said.
Also testifying Thursday was Fairfax Sheriff Stacey Kincaid, who tried to stay out of the crossfire.
Her office in 2018 terminated a cooperative agreement with ICE to hold deportation targets for pickup.
“We have no problem with ICE conducting its lawful business, but it is their business to conduct, not ours,” she said Thursday.
Her jail ranks third in the country in declining detainer ICE requests, with 1,150 in 30 months, according to data released last year by the Center for Immigration Studies. Two of those releases had homicide convictions or charges on their records.
She said she will still let ICE enter her jail to pick up deportation targets up to five days before their release, but won’t hold them beyond their official release date and doesn’t have the capacity to call and notify ICE of the pending release.
Ms. Minter wasn’t happy with that.
“I’m just going to start keeping a list and calling ICE myself,” she said.
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