Americans across the nation have watched in horror as thousands of people have been plucked from their homes, businesses and communities by federal law enforcement officers as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
They are rightly shocked by the seemingly arbitrary and often brutal execution of these arrests, and have sent President Donald Trump’s approval rating on immigration plummeting in recent months. Many now believe the White House has gone too far in its push to expel thousands of people from the country.
One might expect that grim public assessment to resonate in the commonwealth, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin continues to authorize the use of Virginia National Guard troops to support immigration arrests and detention, unnecessarily inserting our service members into this legal and moral morass.
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the policy blueprint for his second term known as “Project 2025,” though he fully intended to carry out those plans if elected. On immigration, however, Trump made no secret of his intention to ramp up enforcement, as evidenced by the numerous “Mass Deportation Now” signs displayed at the Republican National Convention last summer.
However, Trump also said frequently that Immigration Control and Enforcement would be targeting the “worst of the worst” — a theme the administration has repeated frequently since January’s inauguration. The data tell a different story entirely.
A June report by the Cato Institute concluded 65% of those arrested in immigration sweeps had no criminal changes and only 7% were violent offenders. ICE operations have snatched people attending immigration hearings — those who are trying to follow the rules — as well as day laborers and agriculture workers. They have separated children from their families and, in one recent case out of Massachusetts, used a 5-year-old girl as bait to arrest her father.
Those numbers don’t tell the whole story, because the White House ended the public release of immigration information shortly after taking office. The lack of transparency means that most Americans don’t know what is being done in their name or the full scope of how arrests and deportations are reshaping the country’s landscape.
The administration has arrested an untold number of American citizens and legal residents; targeted students for deportation based solely for expressing their political beliefs, which is protected by the U.S. Constitution; and sent people without due process to some of the most notorious and deadly prisons in countries eager to curry favor with the president. The White House has even ended temporary protected status for 11,000 people who fled Afghanistan, many of whom aided U.S. forces during the 20-year war in that country.
And this week, the Miami Herald reported that one-third of the 1,800 people sent to the embarrassingly named “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant camp in Florida are now unaccounted for. ICE won’t, or can’t, say where those individuals are, as lawyers and family members beg for answers. Such disappearances are now commonplace.
Trump isn’t the first president to push for stronger immigration enforcement; under President Barack Obama, the U.S. deported 316,000 people in 2014. But this administration is the first to expand deportation efforts into the nation’s interior, to demand cooperation from local and state law enforcement, and to encourage the deployment of National Guard units to assist in operations. Agents often do not identify themselves, ride in unmarked cars and wear face coverings to obscure their identities, even though they are public servants beholden to the people.
Naturally, Youngkin was quick to answer Trump’s call for assistance. He pushed local police departments to cooperate with ICE and authorized members of the Virginia National Guard to assist deportation operations, though the governor maintains service members will only provide logistical and administrative support.
Even that modest accommodation is too much, and forces our service members to act as cogs in a campaign that screams for more oversight, more transparency and more restraint. Nothing suggests any of this will make the nation safer or stronger, and the Virginia National Guard should play no part in it.
