Arlington County policy grants leniency to illegal immigrant drunk drivers: Congressional report
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesArlington County prosecutors cut breaks to illegal immigrants facing drunk driving charges with the hope that a lower charge could help them avoid deportation, according to a congressional report that labels the left-leaning jurisdiction a sanctuary.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a Democrat whose jurisdiction includes Arlington and Falls Church, said her office will take potential immigration consequences into account when deciding how to handle criminal cases.
That includes domestic violence cases, the House Judiciary Committee said in its interim report as it investigates the county, just outside of Washington.
Arlington has also refused nearly every request to turn over illegal immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation, House investigators said.
Of 310 deportation detainer requests filed by ICE from January 2025 to May 2026, the sheriff’s office honored only two. Both were criminal cases involving judicial warrants. No detainers involving only civil immigration offenses — the usual path for deportation cases — were honored, according to data the committee obtained from ICE.
Among those released were a man charged with assault on police, and another with three arrests in Arlington, 19 arrests in Fairfax County and pending charges in Maryland.
“Arlington County’s sanctuary policies threaten public safety and undermine the safe and effective enforcement of federal immigration law,” the report concluded.
The committee had Ms. Dehghani-Tafti testify behind closed doors over the summer and obtained her office’s internal prosecution policies, including leniency for illegal immigrant “Dreamers” under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program charged with drunk driving.
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The policy says the Department of Homeland Security considers DUI to be a serious misdemeanor that can cause a migrant not to get DACA status renewed — and opens up the chance for a speedy deportation.
“Because of this, we must take an individual’s DACA status into account when developing offers to ensure that, while appropriate sanctions and conditions are put in place to protect the public and prevent future similar behavior, an individual is not deported because of their decision to drive while intoxicated,” the policy reads.
It urges prosecutors to find out about DACA status early in a case so they can “do our part to prevent the disproportionate collateral consequences of a DUI conviction for a DACA recipient.”
Ms. Dehghani-Tafti told the committee they could offer a “lateral charge” equivalent in criminality but one that would avoid DHS consequences.
In a statement responding to the report, Ms. Dehghani-Tafti said the report didn’t capture the tenor of her deposition.
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“The authors of this report are confident, but wrong. Wrong about Virginia law, wrong about county policy, wrong about our office’s policies and their impact, and wrong about the cases they cite,” she said.
She said “many” of the cases the committee highlighted weren’t brought up during the deposition, which she said focused heavily on how her office handled alleged harassment of former county resident Stephen Miller, a top adviser to President Trump.
“From the start, this was a political sham. The committee refused to hear my testimony in public because open testimony makes it much harder to distort the record,” Ms. Dehghani-Tafti said. “In the end, this process amounts to harassing an independent local prosecutor while providing cover for ICE’s abuses.”
Meanwhile, the Arlington County Board enacted a Trust Policy that prohibits the county’s police department from “initiating contact with federal immigration authorities.”
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“In other words, Arlington County’s new policy protects the worst of the worst of criminal aliens — murderers, terrorists, and sex traffickers — from deportation,” the committee said.
The Arlington County Board said the Trust Policy is “grounded in public safety, civil rights and constitutional compliance” and that it’s not local officials’ responsibility to assist the feds on immigration.
“The facts and the law have not changed; immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government and the county’s policies and actions have been compliant with the law,” the Democrat-led board said.
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