Federal investigators and House lawmakers are examining prosecutorial policies in several jurisdictions that allow immigration consequences to influence charging, plea and sentencing decisions for noncitizen defendants, with critics alleging that similarly situated U.S. citizens may not receive the same consideration.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
Federal scrutiny of local prosecutors is intensifying over policies that allow immigration consequences to factor into criminal charging and plea decisions, with investigations and congressional demands now spanning jurisdictions in Virginia, Colorado and Pennsylvania.
The most recent congressional action came this month, according to a Just the News report, when the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee escalated its examination of prosecutors it accuses of giving noncitizen defendants favorable treatment to reduce the possibility of deportation.
In Arlington County, Virginia, the committee and its Immigration Subcommittee released an interim staff report this week accusing Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti and county officials of obstructing federal immigration enforcement and treating some foreign nationals differently from U.S. citizens facing comparable criminal allegations. Dehghani-Tafti’s campaigns have received a combined $515,000 from political groups connected to George Soros, according to Fox News.
“Democrats’ open-borders policies and sanctuary jurisdictions have had devastating consequences for U.S. citizens. Even after the American people resoundingly rejected Democrats’ pro-illegal alien policies in November 2024, Democrats across the country reinforced sanctuary policies to ensure that the millions of illegal aliens who entered the U.S. are never removed from the country,” the Committee wrote in its announcement of the report.
ICE information cited by the committee said sanctuary jurisdictions declined to honor at least 41,085 immigration detainers between October 2022 and early 2026. A detainer is a request that a state or local agency notify ICE before releasing a potentially removable person or maintain custody briefly so federal immigration officers can assume custody.
A major focus of the Arlington report is the treatment of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients charged with driving while intoxicated.
According to the committee, Dehghani-Tafti testified that her office can structure a case resolution or move to a different charge to prevent a DACA recipient from losing protected status because of a DWI conviction.
“This policy ensures that certain foreign nationals are never convicted of DWI in Arlington County, [Virginia] solely due to their status as non-U.S. citizens,” the Committee wrote.
The committee further argued that the same immigration-related consideration is unavailable to citizens.
“Arlington County treats illegal aliens differently than similarly situated American citizens. Immigration-specific considerations, and the potential for a different prosecutorial outcome based on those immigration considerations, are not available to American citizens charged with similar crimes,” the Committee added.
The report also accused Arlington County of restricting cooperation with ICE in cases involving serious offenders, including felons and people identified as terrorists. Those conclusions are allegations and findings of the Republican-led committee, rather than an independent judicial determination.
Similar questions have produced a separate federal investigation in neighboring Fairfax County.
The Justice Department announced in May that it was examining Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s plea bargaining, charging and sentencing policies to determine whether his office discriminated against U.S. citizens by offering preferential treatment to defendants in the country illegally. The department said at the time that it had reached no conclusions about the allegations.
“This investigation will uncover whether this prosecutor is putting the community at risk in offering sweetheart deals to illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in May.
Descano rejected the accusation, telling a local news outlet that “my policies are fair, legal, and reflect the values of my community.”
The investigation followed the killing of Stephanie Minter in Fairfax County. Abdul Jalloh, an immigrant in the country illegally with a lengthy criminal history, was accused in her death. WJLA reported that Descano’s office had previously dropped nearly every charge against Jalloh that had reached the office.
Congress has since expanded its inquiry.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, subpoenaed Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty this month after the committee said his office had failed for more than three months to produce requested records concerning policies that consider immigration-related collateral consequences.
Dougherty’s published policy instructs prosecutors to consider collateral consequences affecting noncitizen defendants in certain cases.
Denver has faced similar congressional scrutiny.
In May, Jordan and other House Judiciary members sent Denver District Attorney John Walsh a demand for records concerning the office’s dealings with ICE and cases in which prosecutors considered immigration consequences.
“Under your leadership, the Denver District Attorney’s Office undermines the rule of law under the guise of safeguarding the public. For years, in fact, your office has openly given preferential treatment to aliens based solely on their immigration status,” Jordan wrote to Walsh in May. “In 2019, your predecessor implemented a policy to consider a criminal defendant’s immigration status when making prosecution decisions. Noting that ‘[d]ifferent individuals charged with the same crime may face markedly different consequences depending upon various factors, including an individual’s immigration status,’ the former District Attorney directed the office to ‘take reasonable steps to mitigate [immigration] consequences” for criminal aliens.’”
Denver’s sanctuary policies had drawn national attention years earlier.
In 2017, Mexican national Ever Valles was released from a Denver jail after posting bond despite an ICE detainer. Weeks later, he was charged with aggravated robbery and first-degree murder in the shooting death of 32-year-old Timothy Cruz. ICE said the jail released Valles without notifying the agency. Denver officials said they believed holding someone solely on an ICE detainer without a criminal warrant would violate the Fourth Amendment.
The dispute over immigration consequences is also playing out in Philadelphia, where District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office openly maintains an Immigration Counsel program.
The office’s published policy says it seeks immigration-neutral outcomes for some defendants and states that “low-level and nonviolent crimes should not lead to deportation or necessarily risk one’s immigration status.” It says prosecutors work to hold defendants accountable while attempting to make consequences roughly equivalent for citizens and noncitizens.
Jordan challenged that rationale in a records demand to Krasner.
“In fact, you created an Immigration Counsel position within your office to evaluate cases involving non-U.S. citizens so that foreign nationals ‘can avoid unnecessary and unjust consequences’ — in other words, to shield criminal aliens from deportation,” Jordan wrote. “You also openly boast about how your policies have resulted in criminal aliens being released onto Philadelphia streets, free to reoffend. Even in cases involving murder or crimes against minors, a prosecutor in your office may still consider a criminal alien’s potential deportation or other immigration consequences in making prosecution decisions.”
The committee sought records from Krasner’s office in May and later issued a subpoena in July after saying the office had failed to produce requested documents. Krasner disputed the committee’s characterization of his policies and said his office complies with the law.
Comparable approaches have been adopted elsewhere.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez has employed immigration attorneys to advise prosecutors about plea agreements and sentences that can carry immigration consequences. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Contra Costa County, California, have also considered immigration status or collateral consequences when resolving cases.
The issue intersects with longstanding disputes over sanctuary policies in California.
In 2015, Kathryn Steinle, 32, was fatally shot at a San Francisco pier by a bullet fired from a gun held by Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, a Mexican national who had previously been deported five times. Garcia Zarate had been released before the shooting despite federal immigration authorities seeking custody.
A jury later acquitted him of murder, involuntary manslaughter and assault charges, while convicting him on a firearms offense. The defense argued the shooting was accidental, and evidence showed the bullet ricocheted before striking Steinle.
Multnomah County, Oregon, likewise has a policy intended to prevent noncitizens from receiving substantially harsher consequences than citizens solely because a criminal disposition triggers deportation.
At the center of the widening dispute is a fundamental disagreement over what equal treatment requires. Prosecutors who use immigration-neutral policies argue that deportation can transform the same criminal conviction into dramatically different punishment for a noncitizen and that charging discretion can be used to prevent disproportionate collateral consequences. Philadelphia’s district attorney’s office explicitly describes its approach as an effort to subject noncitizen defendants to consequences comparable to those imposed on citizens.
House Judiciary Republicans and the Justice Department’s current leadership are examining the issue from the opposite direction, questioning whether modifying charges or plea agreements because of a defendant’s immigration status itself creates unequal treatment for American citizens.
Those competing interpretations are now moving beyond local prosecutorial policy debates and into federal investigations, subpoenas and congressional oversight, putting immigration-related charging decisions under increasing scrutiny nationwide.
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