Mother of murdered woman blasts Fairfax sanctuary policies: ‘System failed my daughter’

Cheryl Minter, mother of a woman murdered at a bus stop in Fairfax County, Virginia, said county authorities put the illegal immigrant ahead of her daughter’s safety as she pleaded with Congress for help Thursday.

Stephanie Minter was stabbed to death in February and authorities charged an illegal immigrant, Abdul Jalloh, who had received numerous breaks from county authorities on more than 30 previous charges involving rapes, stabbings and assaults.

“I’m here because the system failed my daughter,” Ms. Minter told lawmakers. “Caring for one group should not pose a danger to another. »

That was a reference to Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano, the county’s elected prosecutor, whose office has a written policy calling for more lenient charging decisions and more comfortable plea deals with migrants to keep them from being deported.

Mr. Descano, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee alongside Ms. Minter, expressed sadness over the tragedy and vowed to prosecute Mr. Jalloh.

But he said he doesn’t want his office to be seen as helping federal immigration authorities, especially in a county where three out of 10 residents are immigrants.

“Our policy of not diverting our resources to federal immigration enforcement also makes our communities safer,” Descano said. “If victims and witnesses believe that my office will report them to ICE, they will not trust us. »

Jason Miyares, Virginia’s former attorney general, said Mr. Descano was not telling the whole story.

He said Mr. Descano routinely reduced leave for immigrants, keeping them off the radar of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This included the release of Hyrum Baquedano-Rodriguez, a Honduran illegal immigrant who was initially charged with trespassing in a home and attempted kidnapping and “defilement” of a 4-year-old child in 2023. Mr. Descano’s office reduced the charges and ultimately 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 safety hazard, 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 that while his office was handling the case, he was not the lead prosecutor.

A relative alerted ICE to Mr. Rodriguez’s release, who intervened to arrest him.

The case angered Representative Brad Knott, Republican of North Carolina.

“Stop defending the indefensible,” he told Mr. Descano. “You are a coward.”

Mr. Descano recently released a statement on his campaign website in which he boasted of having struck a deal with immigrants.

“If two people commit the same crime, but only one of them’s sentence includes deportation, that is a perversion of justice and not a reflection of the values ​​of Fairfax County,” he said in a statement that remained in effect for six years.

On Thursday, he sought to explain why it was removed weeks ago after being asked to appear before Congress. He said his campaign statement was not binding on his office.

“That was a campaign statement I made before I was Commonwealth’s Attorney,” he said. “I couldn’t believe people were so obtuse that they couldn’t understand the difference between a campaign statement and office policy.”

“It’s almost laughable,” retorted Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio.

Mr. Descano then read the office’s official policy, which directed its prosecutors to “consider immigration consequences” in charging and plea decisions.

He said this was intended to protect legal immigrants accused of relatively minor crimes.

Mr. Miyares, however, said it was difficult to reconcile that with the findings from Mr. Descano’s office.

“He can claim that it has no impact on his charging decisions, but if you look, time and time again … there are a large number of cases where he made a conscious decision not to prosecute and to essentially treat illegal immigrants with more deference than he would a U.S. citizen,” Mr. Miyares said.

Also testifying Thursday was Fairfax Sheriff Stacey Kincaid, who tried to stay out of the crossfire.

In 2018, his office ended a cooperative agreement with ICE aimed at maintaining deportation targets to recover.

“We have no problem with ICE carrying out its lawful activities, but that’s their business, not ours,” she said Thursday.

Its prison ranks third in the nation in terms of decline in ICE detention 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 would still let ICE into her jail to pick up deportees up to five days before their release, but would not detain them beyond their official release date and did not have the ability to call and notify ICE of the impending release.

Mrs. Minter was not happy about this.

“I’m just going to start keeping a list and calling ICE myself,” she said.