Federal immigration officers arrested 1,328 illegal aliens in just 14 days in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C. — proof that the border crisis is a policy choice, not an inevitability, and that enforcement works the moment politicians get out of the way.
The sweep, dubbed "Operation Safe Community — Washington, D.C.," ran from August 1 through August 14 and is being described by federal sources as one of ICE's most successful operations in the agency's history, according to Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin. Nearly 400 of those arrested had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges — including attempted murder, rape, sexual battery, kidnapping, robbery, and drunk driving. The rest were simply in the country illegally. ICE didn't limit itself to criminals; it enforced the law as written.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin praised the agents and singled out the politicians who made the operation necessary in the first place. "Over the course of just two weeks in Virginia and Maryland, they arrested sexual assailants, kidnappers, drunk drivers, robbers, and gang members," Mullin told Fox News. He blasted sanctuary politicians in both states for prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens and vowed the administration would keep removing illegal aliens from communities.
The operation is a devastating indictment of the sanctuary racket. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger used one of her first acts in office to rescind former Governor Glenn Youngkin's executive order requiring Virginia State Police to cooperate with federal immigration authorities through the 287(g) program. Youngkin had also created a task force of federally deputized state troopers to identify and apprehend criminal illegal aliens. Spanberger dismantled it, claiming local police shouldn't devote resources to enforcing federal law. When confronted by a reporter about whether she'd turn violent criminal illegal aliens over to federal authorities, Spanberger walked away without answering.
The Gateway Pundit reported that DHS said three of the four defendants facing murder trials in Fairfax County were illegal aliens, and that Fairfax County had refused to honor more than 1,150 ICE detainers in recent years. Mullin said illegal aliens were responsible for roughly half of the murders in Fairfax County.
Meanwhile, the celebrity class is doing its part for the other side. Actress Rachel Zegler — star of Disney's $170 million box office catastrophe "Snow White" — was spotted on Instagram wearing a shirt reading "ICE out of New York City." The shirt is sold by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a far-left activist group funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Tides, Oxfam, and George Soros's Open Society Foundations, as Breitbart reported. Zegler previously wished that Trump voters "never know peace" and declared "Free Palestine" while promoting her film. The same people who lose hundreds of millions of dollars pushing woke flops want to tell working Americans that immigration enforcement is the real problem.
The money trail tells the story. Billionaire foundations and activist networks fund the politicians who build sanctuary walls around illegal aliens, and the celebrities who provide the cultural cover. Meanwhile, 1,328 arrests in two weeks prove the only thing standing between American communities and enforcement is the will to do it.
The question isn't whether enforcement works. The question is why both parties spent decades pretending it didn't.
