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Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) campaigned as a “centrist,” mainstream Democrat, with a focus on “democracy” and “affordability.” Since her party won unchecked power in last year’s election, it has charged into the culture war fights, rammed through a breathtaking and likely illegal partisan gerrymandering scheme to consolidate its power, and introduced a dizzying array of new tax increases. In the earliest hours of her governorship, Spanberger signed an executive order reversing the common-sense immigration enforcement policies of her predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin. Per the Department of Homeland Security, she signed an executive order barring the Virginia State Police from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take criminal illegal immigrants off Virginia streets. Her office proudly touted the move in a press release, describing it this way (emphasis mine):
“On her first day as Governor, Governor Spanberger rescinded Executive Order 47 (2025), which forced state law enforcement — and encouraged local police departments and sheriff’s offices — to deputize their officers to act as ICE agents. Governor Spanberger removed the directive that Virginia law enforcement agencies divert focus from their core responsibilities — investigating crimes, enforcing state and local laws, and keeping Virginians safe.”
Embracing anti-enforcement sanctuary policies was a Day 1 priority for Spanberger, who framed the move as helping keep Virginians safe. Tell that to the grieving family of 41-year-old Stephanie Minter, who was just stabbed to death at a bus stop in Northern Virginia. The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney recently mentioned this horrifying incident in a piece exposing Fairfax County’s Soros-backed, left-wing prosecutor, Steve Descano, as among the nation’s worst: “Killers are 100 times more likely to avoid a conviction by claiming to be insane in Fairfax County than they would be in the rest of America,” he wrote, in reference to this outrageous case. “The week after [another murderer] was let off the hook, Abdul Jalloh allegedly stabbed Stephanie Minter to death at a bus stop. Jalloh had 30 arrests on his record at the time, but every charge of a violent crime, Descano dropped, setting him free to kill.”
Minter’s accused assailant was arrested repeatedly, only to have violent charges dropped by the blue jurisdiction’s anti-prosecution, pro-criminal prosecutor. Then he escalated to murder, according to authorities. We’ve now learned that in addition to being a serial criminal, this man is also in the United States illegally. The monster who should never have been walking the streets also had no right to be in the country at all.
But thanks to soft-on-crime “compassion” and sanctuary policy madness, he was free to allegedly steal this young woman’s life. A local television journalist named Nick Minock asked Spanberger’s office if she’d finally support honoring an ICE detainer for this particular suspect, despite her anti-enforcement posture — Spanberger had not personally acknowledged this heinous but politically inconvenient crime against one of her constituents. Her office’s response was crafted to sound reasonable, but the upshot of the answer was “no.”
“As a former federal law enforcement officer who conducted joint search and arrest warrants alongside state and local officers, Governor Spanberger firmly believes that violent criminals who are in the United States illegally should be deported by immigration enforcement,” according to the governor’s office. “DHS should request a signed judicial warrant to ensure this violent criminal is deported.”
Fox News correspondent Bill Melguin explains why this is a de facto rejection of ICE’s detainer request against the murder suspect: “Gov. Spanberger’s office tells Nick Minock she won’t honor an ICE detainer for an illegal alien with 30+ prior arrests, including rape, who is accused of murdering a woman at a bus stop. She wants ICE to get a judicial warrant – which isn’t possible unless there is suspicion of [a] *FEDERAL CRIME*. Murder, rape, etc. are largely state crimes. It’s remarkable how few politicians understand how this works. A federal judicial warrant can only be signed off on by a federal judge if there is probable cause that a FEDERAL CRIME has been committed.”
Melugin is being charitable in suggesting Spanberger may not understand how this works. Indeed, her office’s statement appealed to her expertise as a former federal law enforcement officer. The reality is that sanctuary politicians, including her, use the “signed judicial warrant” verbiage that offers a sensible-sounding smokescreen to confuse voters while standing behind their braying base’s anti-enforcement demands.
According to National Review, the suspect had “previously been charged more than 40 times, including for egregious crimes such as aggravated assault, malicious wounding, and rape. Prosecutors dropped 20 of the 43 charges against Jalloh. The Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office said the charges were dropped because Jalloh often chose victims who did not have permanent addresses, making the proceedings more difficult.”
Documents show he has been unlawfully present in the U.S. for nearly a decade and a half, and had a final order of removal lodged against him by a federal immigration judge. In other words, this man has received multiple rounds of “due process” over the course of many years, including being ordered deported. But he’s found sanctuary in one of Virginia’s most left-wing jurisdictions, even after his violent crime sprees. And now a woman is dead. Virginia’s governor still refuses to let go of her extremist ideology.
Conservative writer Greg Price offers a similarly blunt summary of this decision and response, in which “Abigail Spanberger will not turn over an illegal alien to ICE with 30 prior arrests– including for rape, assault, and malicious wounding and had most of his charges dropped by Fairfax DA Steve Descano — unless he commits an additional federal crime that would then give ICE the ability to obtain a judicial warrant from an Article III judge. As opposed to just handing him over to ICE with an administrative detainer.”
ICE justifiably piled on, noting that this vicious slaying represents “yet another American death at the hands of someone who SHOULDN’T BE HERE that could have been prevented.”
OPERATION EPIC FURY IS PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH IN ACTION
Spanberger, selected by national Democrats to give their State of the Union rebuttal, is digging in her heels on sanctuary extremism even after Democrats in deep-blue Minnesota finally relented and decided to play ball with the feds, though not before a great deal of needless chaos, lawlessness, and violence played out in their streets. Border czar Tom Homan hailed “unprecedented” cooperation in controlled hand-offs of criminal illegal immigrants in local and state custody — an approach so sensible that a large majority of Minnesotans support it, and an even larger majority of Americans broadly, according to polling taken at the height of the upheaval. But not the “centrist” Spanberger, who is stiff-arming an ICE detainer for an accused illegal immigrant rapist and murderer who police say just knifed a woman in her state to death.
Welcome to Democrats’ new era of “centrist” “pragmatism,” in which coddling repeat criminals and violent illegal immigrants is sold as “keeping Virginians safe.”
