A new House Judiciary Committee report criticizing one Virginia county’s resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities has drawn sharp approval from local Republicans, despite Arlington County’s firmly Democratic political identity.
The 23-page interim report, prepared by the committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, takes aim at Arlington’s sanctuary policies. It accuses the county and other Democratic-led local governments of putting public safety at risk by limiting federal immigration officials’ ability to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
“Chairman [Jim] Jordan’s Judiciary Committee report about Arlington is spot on,” Matthew Hurtt, chairman of the Arlington County Republican Committee, told News Outlet.
“Arlington elected officials prioritize illegal aliens over the safety of Arlington residents. And as an Arlington resident, I’ve seen this play out over the last several months.”
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Federal immigration authorities make an arrest in Arlington, Va., in February. A House Judiciary Committee report criticized Arlington County officials over policies limiting cooperation with immigration enforcement. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
The committee said Arlington law enforcement has maintained limited contact with federal immigration authorities, pointing specifically to the county board’s Trust Policy, which sets rules for local police cooperation with federal agencies.
Under the policy updated in May 2025, the Arlington County Police Department is barred from “initiating contact with federal immigration authorities,” including in cases involving an undocumented immigrant identified as a “violent felon, gang member, human trafficker, or terrorist.”
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Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County & City of Falls Church, Va., speaks at an event at the Center for American Progress about Virginia’s newly elected progressive prosecutors Dec. 17, 2019. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The report also cited a closed-door deposition held July 16, 2026, involving Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church. According to the committee, she acknowledged that immigration status can factor into her office’s decisions on case outcomes and said written guidelines do not prohibit prosecutors from considering it in any type of crime.
Dehghani-Tafti also defended a memo directing prosecutors to consider alternative charges when a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipient faces a drunk-driving allegation.
Because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services considers a DUI conviction a “significant misdemeanor”—a classification that can prevent DACA renewal and lead to deportation—the memo tells prosecutors to account for DACA status in an effort to avoid “disproportionate and devastating collateral consequences.”
“It’s not the job of a prosecutor to decide lenience against illegal aliens who are oftentimes committing violent crimes against individuals or property crimes, but that is exactly what Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti has been doing,” Hurtt said.
Arlington County Board of Supervisors (from left to right): Julius D. “JD” Spain, Sr., Susan Cunningham, Takis Karantonis, Board Chair Matt de Ferranti and Vice Chair Maureen Coffey. (Arlington County)
Hurtt called Dehghani-Tafti a “left-wing criminal justice activist” and also criticized Steve Descano, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for nearby Democratic-run Fairfax County. Fairfax has received national attention following a series of crimes allegedly involving undocumented immigrants.
In a statement obtained by ARLNow, Dehghani-Tafti dismissed the committee’s findings as a “political sham.”
“The committee refused to hear my testimony in public because open testimony doesn’t let you distort a record,” she said. “This report is the predictable product of that process—a piece of political propaganda timed for the midterms, built on the deliberate misrepresentations of my policies and my testimony.
“Now it’s clear why they wouldn’t hold a public hearing and why they stonewalled my requests for the full deposition transcript,” she added. “They didn’t want the public to see it. I demand the committee release the full, unedited transcript of my deposition immediately.”
News Outlet has contacted Dehghani-Tafti’s office, the Sheriff’s Office and the County Board for comment.
