For four years, I have watched Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano from a seat on the Virginia House Courts of Justice Criminal Subcommittee. I have read his policies, tracked the bills his political allies push in Richmond, and listened to the families on the wrong end of his charging decisions. Last Thursday on Capitol Hill, the rest of America finally got the view I have had since 2022.
It was ugly.
Under questioning from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, Descano was asked why, one week after Congress requested his testimony, he scrubbed language from his website promising his office would “make charging and plea decisions that limit or avoid immigration consequences” and calling deportation as a criminal penalty “a perversion of justice.” That language sat on his campaign site for six years. Then, conveniently, it vanished.
His explanation was the moment of the hearing. The promises were just “a campaign statement,” he said. Voters, he suggested, were “obtuse” if they could not tell the difference between what he told them to win the election and what he actually did in office.
That is the whole sanctuary city playbook in one sentence. Tell the voters one thing. Govern as the opposite. Dare them to do anything about it.
Cheryl Minter, sitting two chairs away from Descano in that hearing room, already knew the answer. Her daughter Stephanie was stabbed to death at a Fairfax County bus stop in February by Abdul Jalloh, an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone with more than 30 prior arrests. Descano’s office dropped charge after charge. Fairfax County police warned his prosecutors in writing, three separate times, that Jalloh would seriously hurt or kill someone if he were not detained.
He did. And Marvin Morales-Ortez, an alleged MS-13 member from El Salvador, was rearrested for murder the day after Descano’s office declined to prosecute him on a prior charge. This is not a pair of unlucky outcomes. It is what the system is designed to produce when the prosecutor decides, in writing, that immigration status takes precedence over public safety.
Here is what nobody at that hearing said plainly enough, so I will: sanctuary policies are a transfer of cost and risk from people who broke the law to people who did not. Every dropped charge, every ignored ICE detainer, every Crespo plea deal designed to dodge deportation is a bill someone else pays. The Fairfax County taxpayer pays for the courts, jails, public defenders, social services, emergency rooms, and schools, while absorbing the consequences of releases that should never have happened. The Stephanie Minters of this Commonwealth pay with their lives, and taxpayers are forced to fund it.
And the bill keeps growing. The sanctuary model does not reduce crime. It recycles criminals. It does not save money. It pours money into welfare programs, housing assistance, and emergency services for populations that federal law says should not be here in the first place. It does not produce safer communities. It produces police officers writing prophetic emails to prosecutors about defendants they have arrested 10, 20, 30 times, begging them to do their jobs.
There is exactly one fix, and it is the one the open-borders Left will fight to the last breath. Enforcement. Honor the detainers. Prosecute the charges. Hand over the people federal law says have to go. Stop running the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office as a drive-thru where repeat offenders pick up their dropped charges and head out the back door.
I have spent four sessions in the General Assembly working to undo the damage this approach has caused the Commonwealth. The progressive prosecutor model that Descano represents, bankrolled by Soros-aligned money and dressed up as reform, has produced exactly what its critics predicted. And the data is readily available to back up these claims.
A Commonwealth’s Attorney swears an oath to enforce the law. Not to edit it. Not to apologize for it. Not to scrub it off a website when Congress comes calling. The voters of Fairfax County will get their say in 2027. The rest of Virginia should not have to wait.
Virginians have heard enough campaign statements. Time to enforce the law.
***
Del. Wren Williams represents Virginia’s 47th District in the House of Delegates and serves as a member of the Virginia Crime Commission. He sits on the House Courts of Justice Committee and its Criminal Subcommittee.