Republicans slammed Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey A. Kincaid, a Democrat, for ending an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last year but wound up not running anyone against her in Tuesday’s election.
Under the agreement, the county had held inmates living in the country illegally for 48 hours past their release date from jail so ICE had more time to bring them into custody for deportation. Kincaid’s decision to terminate the ICE agreement made headlines and drew criticism from Republicans.
“Addressing our gang issue just became much more difficult for law enforcement with the Sheriff’s decision to terminate the jails agreement with ICE. Billed as pro-immigrant, termination of the agreement is actually anti-immigrant in that it significantly hurts law enforcement’s ability to rid our streets of MS-13 and other gang members,” Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity, a Republican, said in a statement at the time.
“These gang members prey primarily on our legal and illegal immigrant communities and vulnerable youth in our schools. It is ironic that this announcement came on the same day as the Board approved an additional $500K in spending to fight the gang problem and without discussion with the Board of Supervisors,” he added.
This past May, the board of supervisors in Fairfax County approved a $200,000 pilot program to help undocumented immigrants fight deportation proceedings. The Fairfax County GOP was critical of the move.
“It’s bad enough that Fairfax County has withdrawn from its agreement with ICE,” Fairfax GOP Chairman Tim Hannigan said in a statement. “Now Fairfax Democrats want us all to foot the legal bills of those who flout our nation’s immigration laws.”
Hannigan said that “every dollar spent on lawyers for illegals is one less dollar for police, schools, roads, or parks.”
In Tuesday’s election, Kincaid faced one challenger, independent Christopher DeCarlo, whose campaign website hasn’t been updated since 2015. Kincaid easily won re-election for another 4-year term with 78 percent of the vote.
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