(The Center Square) — Sanctuary cities could be one of the most hotly debated issues – whether behind closed doors or on the chamber floor – during the Virginia General Assembly’s 2025 legislative session.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Thursday evening that his latest budget proposal included a “No Sanctuary Cities” provision.
The provision would require local law enforcement and all jails to “fully comply” with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers. It would also withhold funding from localities that “enact practices impeding cooperation with ICE.”
The announcement follows heightened talk of sanctuary cities amongst Republican state leaders, especially after an August report from the Center for Immigration Studies. The report was mostly an update of the center’s map, which tracks sanctuary cities in the U.S., showing that Virginia had the most sanctuary jurisdictions of any non-sanctuary state.
About a week after the news broke, Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares issued an opinion “regarding local and state cooperation with federal immigration agencies” urging compliance.
“Should an illegal immigrant be detained in a Virginia jail, there is nothing in law preventing our local and state law enforcement from cooperating with federal agencies,” Miyares wrote. “Virginia’s law enforcement professionals have both the authority and a moral duty to cooperate with every federal immigration order to the maximum extent possible.”
Miyares’ opinion addressed a specific inquiry from a Virginia sheriff about whether a sheriff is “prohibited by law” from notifying ICE of the release of someone the agency had issued a detainer for. Still, Miyares did not state in that opinion that law enforcement was required by law to comply.
Youngkin is trying to ensure that Virginia law enforcement complies through his budget proposal, but the provision will have to survive both the House of Delegates and Senate finance committees in 2025—which may be difficult with Democratic majorities in both chambers. Both committees can hold closed-door sessions.
There is no federal definition of a “sanctuary” jurisdiction, but the term is used to refer to cities, counties, states, or local and regional jail jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Immigrant advocacy nonprofit Global Refuge describes sanctuary cities as “in general… [communities] with a policy, written or unwritten, that discourages local law enforcement from reporting the immigration status of individuals unless it involves investigation of a serious crime.”
However, in Virginia, there have been at least several reported instances of migrants arrested for serious crimes who have been released by local law enforcement, disregarding ICE detainers.