Homeland Security did not ask Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger for a photo op. It asked her not to put a charged killer back on the street.
On Aug. 30, Staunton police answered a 911 call and found two stabbed women. One was dead at the scene. The other went to the hospital. The man they arrested at the scene was Freddi Chigo Mil, an illegal alien from Mexico. He now faces second-degree murder and malicious wounding. ICE lodged a detainer the same day at Middle River Regional Jail and told Spanberger and her sanctuary partners to keep him locked up so he can be removed after he faces justice.
That should not require a press release from Washington. In a sane country, a foreign national charged with murdering a woman on a Virginia street would already be headed out. In Spanberger’s Virginia, the federal government has to beg.
“This is what the Commonwealth of Virginia has become under the sanctuary policies of Governor Abigail Spanberger and her fellow sanctuary politicians,” said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “It’s time to put an end to these preventable tragedies. Deporting illegal aliens saves lives.”
She Cut the Wire on Day One
This did not sneak up on Richmond. In her first days as governor, Spanberger signed executive orders barring state cooperation with ICE and killing Virginia’s 287(g) agreements. Those pacts let troopers, corrections officers, and local deputies help federal agents identify and hold illegal aliens already in custody. Youngkin used them. Spanberger tore them up.
Then the bodies started stacking.
DHS says Virginia has logged more than 20 serious illegal-alien crime cases in 2026 alone. The charge sheet is not shoplifting. It is murder, rape, abduction, child sexual abuse material, sex crimes against children, and an attempt to take a cop’s gun. Fairfax County keeps showing up on the list like a magnet.
The same day ICE asked Spanberger not to release Mil, agents arrested Yinmi Molina-Zepeda in Woodbridge. He is a Salvadoran illegal alien wanted at home for aggravated homicide. That is the pattern. They enter. They stay. They hunt.
A Roster No Governor Should Own
Read the names and try to call this compassion.
- Raul Genesis Ortiz Moran, Mexican illegal alien, charged with second-degree murder and aggravated sexual battery in the death of a 2-year-old girl in Louisa County.
- Abdul Jalloh, Sierra Leone illegal alien with more than 30 prior arrests, charged with murder after fatally stabbing 41-year-old Stephanie Minter at a Fairfax bus stop.
- Juan Arevalo Mendez, twice-deported Salvadoran illegal alien, charged with rape and abduction in Fairfax County.
- Jose Nahun Aleman Hernandez, charged with molesting a 5-year-old girl in Woodbridge, then granted bond.
- Jorge Enrique Garcia-Rodriguez, charged with forcible intercourse with a child under 13 and six counts of possessing child pornography.
- Israel Christopher Flores-Ortiz, convicted on nine counts after groping underage girls at a Fairfax high school, then given a slap-on-the-wrist sentence before ICE finally deported him.
- Misael Lopez Gomez, charged with murder and felony child abuse after allegedly bludgeoning his own 3-month-old daughter to death.
Breitbart and Townhall have been tracking the same roster. So has DHS. This is not a couple of hard cases. This is a policy harvest.
Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed.
Sanctuary is that decree. It writes protection for the lawbreaker into the operating manual of the state and then acts shocked when the next woman is found in the street.
The Prosecutor Problem Sits Right Next to the Governor
Spanberger is not working this machine alone. Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano has spent years telling prosecutors to weigh “collateral immigration consequences” when they charge and plea out cases. That is a polite way of saying do not do anything that might get the illegal alien deported.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has now subpoenaed Descano for records after the office stonewalled earlier requests. Jordan’s letter is blunt. Preferential treatment of foreign-national criminals lets them dodge both criminal punishment and removal. Descano’s office called the subpoena a “partisan siege.” Dead women are not a talking point. They are the exhibit.
Jennifer Harrison of the Victims’ Rights Reform Council told Fox News the arrangement is already insane. The federal government now has to ask state and local officials not to release dangerous illegal aliens after there are bodies on the pavement. Sean Kennedy of Virginians for Safe Communities put it cleaner still. Spanberger’s posture is not pro-immigrant. It is pro-criminal. The people these predators most often destroy are the very migrants she claims to protect.
The Script From the Governor’s Office
Spanberger’s spokespeople recite the same paragraph every time. She “strongly believes” violent criminals who are here illegally should be prosecuted and deported. The Department of Corrections still notifies ICE when someone born outside the United States is in state custody. She used to hunt child predators as a federal officer. She will always prioritize Virginia families.
Fine. Then honor the detainers. Restore 287(g). Tell Descano to stop sanding the edges off charges so a rapist can dodge ICE. Answer a reporter when a 16-year-old is shot dead in Manassas instead of sitting in the car with the window up. Words are cheap. Policy is what fills the morgue.
She also rebuilt the parole board. Reporter Nick Minock found criminals are now ten times more likely to win parole than they were under Glenn Youngkin. Families of murder victims have already watched killers walk with decades left on the clock. Softness at the jailhouse door and softness at the prison gate are the same theology. The offender is the client. The public is the inconvenience.
A ruler who will not bear the sword is not merciful. He is negligent. Romans says the magistrate is a minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Spanberger took the oath and then spent her opening week telling the sword to stand down.
Mil is still in jail tonight because local police did their job and ICE filed the paperwork. The question hanging over Richmond is whether the governor’s political project will treat that detention as an inconvenience to be lawyered away. Virginia already knows what happens when it does. Stephanie Minter knew. That 2-year-old in Louisa County never got the chance to know anything else.
Deporting illegal aliens saves lives. Mullin is right. The only mystery left is why a governor who sold herself as a moderate still needs to be told.
