Arlington police are contacting immigration enforcement more than they used to.
As of last week, the Arlington County Police Department had contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement 17 times since the start of the year. This is ACPD’s highest rate of voluntary cooperation with the federal agency since the county began publishing these numbers in 2022, according to data provided to ARLnow.
The agency initiated contact with ICE 18 times in all of 2024, seven times in 2023 and four times in 2022.
The recent increase comes despite the Arlington County Board tightening its policy on when police can contact immigration enforcement shortly after President Donald Trump’s election in November. ACPD ties the change to Arlington’s elevated crime rates in recent years.
“ACPD does not enforce federal immigration laws and does not monitor, contact, detain, interview, investigate or arrest a person solely for determining their immigration status,” ACPD spokesperson Ashley Savage told ARLnow. “An individual’s right to file a police report, participate in police-community activities, or otherwise benefit from police services is not contingent upon citizenship or immigration status.”
Arlington County’s “trust policy,” which allows police to initiate contact with ICE only in contexts involving identified gang members and certain serious crimes, has become a flash point for local activists seeking to fight Trump’s escalating crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
At various meetings since Trump took office, County Board members have criticized the president’s approach to immigration enforcement and expressed a desire to shield immigrant communities from its consequences.
However, organizers with La ColectiVA — a group that advocates for ending voluntary cooperation with ICE in Arlington — point to the new data as evidence that officials aren’t serious about these priorities.
“It feels like gaslighting to the community, because the community is left wondering … who can we trust, and how can we believe them, if the data is showing us the opposite of what they’re telling us?” organizer Allison Beltran told ARLnow.
County Board Chair Takis Karantonis told ARLnow that officials are currently reviewing the trust policy, with updates on recent discussions likely to come at the Board’s May 10 meeting.
Some new factors the Board is considering, he said, are the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with court orders and apparent disregard for some immigrants’ due process rights.
“The current federal administration has stated, repeatedly, that it does not believe those who are immigrants are entitled to due process and has refused to comply with related court orders,” Karantonis said. “Again, it is not Arlington’s place to enforce immigration law, but it is deeply unsettling to think that someone in our community, regardless of immigration status, could have their fundamental rights violated in such a way.”
Who is ACPD reporting to ICE?
ACPD data provides a breakdown of the contexts in which police are contacting immigration enforcement.
All but a handful of contacts are listed as “gang related,” and most involve offenses ranging from petty larceny to armed robbery and drug dealing.
“The vast majority of the contacts are related to gang investigations,” Savage told ARLnow. “Additionally, since ACPD began tracking contacts with federal immigration authorities in 2022, the volume of reported criminal incidents and arrests in Arlington has also increased each year.”Total reported offenses jumped by about 14% in Arlington between 2023 and 2024, according to ACPD’s crime data dashboard.
Arlington officers respond to over 65,000 calls for service every year and defer a tiny portion of suspects to ICE in compliance with county policy, Savage said.
In January and February, Savage added, two criminal incidents resulted in police contacting immigration authorities about multiple suspects.
In February, an ICE press release reported the arrests of “three illegally present aliens during a routine enforcement operation in Arlington.” Two were previously convicted of crimes including disorderly conduct, public intoxication, and drunk driving, ICE said.
ACPD, meanwhile, has not contacted Virginia State Police about any immigration matters since Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order directing state law enforcement to assist federal immigration enforcement, Savage said.
Critics of the current trust policy have underscored the level of discretion that it gives police. For instance, it allows supervisors to approve contact with ICE if an undocumented immigrant is “a confirmed gang member,” provided that circumstances indicate that this “is prudent to maintain community safety.”
La ColectiVA member Amber Qureshi argued that this kind of language leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
For instance, ACPD’s Gang Unit lists a broad range of activities and features as “potential signs of gang involvement.” These range from “special hand signals” and “unique tattoo symbols” to more ambiguous factors like “changes in attitude” and “negative contact with school officials.”
“These are signs, apparently, of gang involvement, and … we’re also seeing, on a national scale, the Trump administration using the same term to essentially kidnap people and banish them to a torture camp in El Salvador,” she said. “So this is really an extension of what the federal government is doing.”
Local officials and police have consistently said that they do not enforce federal immigration law.
“The number of contacts made with ICE can be driven by several factors,” Karantonis said, when asked about the new ACPD data. “They do not necessarily indicate increased cooperation with the federal agency.”
County Board weighs its approach
Since Trump’s election, the County Board has walked a fine line in its approach to immigration enforcement.
At the November meeting where officials adopted the revised trust policy, some officials alluded to possible dangers in drawing too much attention to Arlington.
“We are facing … very, very tough times, and we have to be very careful and very strategic in how we [manage] them,” Karantonis said at the time. “We definitely don’t want to cause even more harm, which is fully possible.”
Since that time, however, the County Board has quietly taken some steps to support Arlington’s immigrant communities and thwart immigration officers. At a meeting days after Trump took office, for instance, Board members allocated $250,000 in funds that have since made their way to two organizations providing legal support for undocumented Arlington residents.
At a meeting earlier this month, Karantonis said the Board “is currently reviewing” the trust policy and plans to share more details soon.
“Our review is motivated by significant shifts in national immigration enforcement policies that mark a departure from the supremacy of the rule of law, the principles of due process and respect for every person’s constitutional rights,” he said. “We have heard ongoing and growing concerns from our residents in this room and across our entire community.”
If officials are considering the impacts of their messaging, Beltran argued that this is no time for caution.
“This narrative of being afraid of the president — I think they’re just playing into the exact rhetoric that he’s promoting, because they’re, sort of, promoting what he’s doing, and that it’s OK for us to make our decisions about how the community is run and how community members should feel in their day to day based on threats,” she said.
Karantonis didn’t elaborate on what kinds of changes to the trust policy the County Board is considering. No matter what, he said, residents’ safety is Board members’ top priority.
“The Board’s focus is to ensure that all residents are safe and feel safe when accessing local government services available to all residents,” he said. “From filing a police report, to having access to life-saving emergency services, to participating in an array of available public, social safety, educational, and recreational services — no resident should have to think twice before reaching out to the County for help or support, regardless of their citizenship status.”
