Virginia is on track to get one of its nastiest winter storms in years, but fear of another ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is on the mind of immigrant Virginians.
Governor Abigail Spanberger spoke to those fears ahead of the storm at a press conference Thursday afternoon.
“Their goal, their intent in this emergency is to get people who need to get to a hospital to a hospital, to get people who are stranded on the road back to someplace safe,” the governor said of the duty emergency responders have as a storm prepares to blow through the Commonwealth.
Spanberger’s comments come only hours after 17-year-old Guillermo Mora Rodriguez spoke to reporters at the Capitol in Richmond. While he’s a U.S. citizen and a Central Virginia resident, his father, who Mora Rodriguez said had no criminal convictions, was taken by ICE in September and is currently in detention in Farmville. His father’s removal was followed by bullying in school and a physical altercation. But he was afraid to call the police and report it, and that fear lingers.
“I feel like they don’t even see the citizenship part, I feel like they only see the skin color part," Mora Rodriguez told Radio IQ. "So, I don’t really feel safe still to call law enforcement.”
His fears stem, in part, due to the agreement between state law enforcement and ICE, known as a 287g agreement. Spanberger signed an executive order that rolled back a mandate from former Governor Glenn Youngkin that required Virginia State Police work with ICE, but she has not removed the state agency from the agreement.
When asked about Spanberger’s authority to suspend the agreement during the pending emergency, her office offered no response.
As for the impact of this weekend's storm, the governor asked Virginians to stay off the roads starting Saturday night through Monday morning. She also warned ongoing low temperatures may make clearing roads even harder, with some communities not seeing snowplows until 24 to 48 hours after the storm ends.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
