Pressure ramps up on Virginia governor for defying ICE detainers

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger

Abigail Spanberger came in hot as Virginia's new governor earlier this year, spewing anti-ICE rhetoric right out of the gate and ending cooperation that allowed state law enforcers to assist federal agents with capturing illegal immigrants accused of crimes. 

"I repealed and pulled back from what had been my predecessor's executive order 47, which mandated the work of Virginia state law enforcement agencies with ICE," Spanberger boasted to reporters in early February. A couple of months later -- after numerous high-profile violent crimes in Virginia that have been blamed on illegal immigrants -- the governor finds herself under increasing pressure to allow state and local authorities to cooperate with ICE agents again. 

In a public statement this week, ICE specifically asked Spanberger to ensure that an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who is accused of bludgeoning his 3-month-old daughter to death last week. Officials say Misael Lopez Gomez, 28, entered the U.S. illegally in 2023 and was allowed into the country under the Biden administration's lax border policies. He is charged with second-degree murder and felony child abuse after the medical examiner ruled blunt force trauma as the cause of the infant girl's death. 

“This cold-blooded killer murdered his own three-month-old daughter. We are calling on Governor Spanberger to commit to not releasing this barbaric animal from jail into Virginia communities,” Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in the statement. “This monster should have never been allowed in our country by the Biden administration."

As Fox News points out, the savage killing of the 3-month-old girl is the latest in a string of high-profile violent crimes in which illegal immigrants have been accused since Spanberger came into office.

ICE has also issued detainers for an illegal immigrant accused of killing a man with a machete, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador accused of sexually assaulting a dozen high school girls, and an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone who is accused of murdering Stephanie Minter, 41, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, by stabbing her in the neck at a bus stop late in February. Abdul Jalloh, the illegal immigrant charged with Minter's murder, has been in the country illegally since 2012, DHS says, and had been arrested more than 30 times for all manner of offenses including rape, drug possession and identity theft, among many others, prior to Minter's killing. 

Watch a clip below from Fox News for more on the story.