Spanberger: Illegal-alien Murder Suspect Will Not Be Not Turned Over to ICE Without Warrant

Far-left Governor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia said she expects state and local authorities to release illegal-alien rapists after they serve their sentences instead of turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Deep State CIA Democrat’s latest outrage came after the Department of Homeland Security requested that she ensure that a murder suspect with a record of almost three dozen arrests is not released, but instead turned over to ICE pursuant to a federal detainer request.

Spanberger claimed that ICE needs a “judicial warrant” to require a transfer to ICE custody. The newly minted governor apparently does not understand federal immigration law, and began her war against ICE on taking office, when she ordered state agencies to cease cooperating with ICE and encouraged localities to do likewise.

Thirty Arrests

The contretemps over the latest illegal-alien criminal began when Fairfax County cops arrested Abdul Jalloh, 32, of Sierra Leone, and charged him with murder. Authorities allege that he stabbed a woman to death.

Jalloh jumped the border in 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported:

His criminal history includes more than 30 arrests for charges of rape, malicious wounding, assault, drug possession, identity theft, trespassing, larceny, firing a weapon, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and pick pocketing.

ICE previously lodged a detainer against Jalloh in 2020, and he was granted a final order of removal by a judge who found he could be removed to any country other than Sierra Leone. This case illustrated the importance of third country removals to get criminal illegal aliens out of the U.S.

“We are calling on Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Virginia’s sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this murderer and violent career criminal from their jail without notifying ICE,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “This illegal alien’s murder of an innocent, beautiful American woman came less than 24 hours before Governor Spanberger’s demonization of ICE law enforcement.”

As The New American reported last month, Spanberger quickly moved to protect illegal alien rapists, murderers, and others from deportation. She ordered state police and other agencies to stop helping ICE. She requested that local authorities likewise ignore the agency. Shortly thereafter, ICE collared Shayan Kahhal, an illegal-alien rapist. He was living free and easy in Norfolk.

DHS’ appeal on Jalloh left Spanberger unmoved. She gave ABC affiliate WJLA in Washington, D.C., the following statement:

As a former federal law enforcement officer who conducted joint search and arrest warrants alongside state and local officers, Governor Spanberger firmly believes that violent criminals who are in the United States illegally should be deported by immigration enforcement. DHS should request a signed judicial warrant to ensure this violent criminal is deported.

Official Response

Understandably, federal officials are dismayed at Spanberger’s wanting to shield illegal-alien rapists, murderers, and other criminals from deportation, apparently unaware that she’s placing her own children at risk.

“After this criminal alien serves his sentence for MURDER, Governor Spanberger will release him back out onto Virginia’s streets, saying that ICE needs a signed ‘judicial warrant’ to detain him,” ICE replied on X:

This is asinine and legally illiterate. ICE is empowered by federal law to detain illegal aliens, and state officials like Spanberger are REQUIRED to honor ICE detainers. 

Only a month into being governor, and she’s protecting illegal alien murderers. Disgusting.

White House aide Stephen Miller explained the law to Spanberger on X.

“Federal judicial warrants are for arresting and charging people to stand trial for specific federal crimes before a judge and jury,” he wrote:

They have nothing to do with deportation. Zero. Nothing. The system for deporting criminal aliens from state custody is, and always has been, ICE requesting a custody transfer prior to release. Thousands of criminals are removed every week through this system. In Sanctuary cities/states, criminal aliens are simply set free to maim and murder.

While far-left judges have sided with local jurisdictions who refuse to honor detainers, black-letter federal law is clear.

8 U.S. Code 1324, Bringing in and harboring aliens, applies to sanctuary officials in two codicils. It punishes “any person who”:

knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;

encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.”

Three other applicable laws, as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi warned sanctuary jurisdictions, are these:

• 18 U.S. Code 1071 — forbids concealing a person from arrest;
• 18 U.S. Code 1505 — forbids obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees; and/or
• 8 U.S. Code 1373 — forbids blocking communication between government agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The Justice Department has sued multiple jurisdictions to overturn sanctuary policies that trespass the federal Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

GOP Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri roasted Spanberger in a Judiciary Committee hearing today.

Explaining that sanctuary city and state politicians don’t want to deport illegal-alien rapists and murderers, Schmitt said “it’s happening in Northern Virginia.” 

Continued Schmitt: 

The new governor just today said that this brutal killer, Abdul Jalloh, an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone with more than 30 prior arrests, who brutally stabbed to death Stephanie Minter, a mother, an American citizen, less than 50 miles from there, she will not work with ICE. If for some reason, this monster gets released, she will not let ice know when he’s being released. Think about that. That’s what is happening in this country.

So forgive me, if I don’t want to be lectured by the Democrats on this point I would think in a different time, in a different place that we can all actually agree that if somebody is here illegally and they’re being released from prison that we would let federal law enforcement know about it. Apparently not.