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Supervisor Juli Briskman is condemning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for what she says was a series of aggressive and secretive detentions in her community — including an incident last week where plainclothes ICE officers “manhandled a Loudoun resident” and “swatted away another resident’s phone.”
“These residents were exercising their constitutional right to observe public Federal Immigration Court proceedings, activities in a public parking lot of a public building, and Federal Officers,” Briskman said. “They were in no way disrupting their ability to do their jobs.”
According to Briskman, ICE ambushed and detained 10 people outside the Immigration Court building on Ridgetop Circle on Wednesday, June 11.
Since May 22, ICE has taken 25 people into custody at that location, including “law-abiding working residents (who) had shown up in good faith to their court hearings.”
She also cited troubling cases in which ICE detained residents at home or after calling for help following a crash — and in one instance, deported a man just four days after arresting him outside his Sterling home.
“These unlawful, vigilante incidents are happening all over the country and in our community,” she said, adding that “the officers” often wear masks and conceal their identities.
“The Department of Homeland Security, DOJ, and ICE are acting lawlessly, violating due process, and bringing authoritarian violence into our neighborhoods.”
Briskman also took aim at Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman’s decision to partner with ICE through an agreement, which allows deputies to assist federal agents with detentions and check for ICE holds on individuals booked into jail.
“Local taxpayer dollars are being used to support ICE mass deportation efforts,” Briskman said. She added that her office’s attempts to obtain basic records about who is being detained or transferred to ICE have been blocked by the sheriff’s office.
“To partner with a lawless federal agency that is illegally deporting non-criminals, green card holders, and law-abiding working residents is counter to Loudoun’s community values of inclusiveness, fairness, compassion, and safety,” she said.
“ICE is violating human rights and the basic tenets of due process, and to cooperate with this agency is complicity.”
Calling the partnership “irreparably harmful” to community trust, Briskman demanded action.
"We are a country of laws that affords due process and civil rights to every individual no matter their citizenship status," she continued.
"It is apparent that ICE is not honoring these laws or the democratic norms that make our nation the envy of the world."
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