Kierra Johnson
White supremacy has an eternal thirst for scapegoats, and Virginia Republicans are attempting to break apart entire communities and families to satisfy it. These efforts are consistent with a push and pull between progress for all communities in the Commonwealth and regressive initiatives that rely on misinformation and disinformation while claiming to make Virginia safer. There are well-known precedents throughout Virginia’s history that demonstrate why mass hysteria about immigrants is destructive and how it does not contribute to the safety of Virginians.
During the first two weeks of March 2025, ICE collaborated with Virginia law enforcement to arrest 214 migrants, some of whom are citizens, with the encouragement of Governor Glenn Youngkin. Only a small fraction of the arrests were people who had alleged ties to criminal organizations, and community members allege that United States citizens were caught up in the raids as well. What is being sold to Virginians as a safety initiative is actually putting citizens at risk of displacement, and weakening communal relationships with institutions such as hospitals and emergency services, because of fear of retaliation. While several different ethnicities have been targeted, the majority of immigrants taken by ICE have been from Latin America, putting the Latino community on high alert as ICE continues to operate all over Virginia.
This is not the first time that nationwide xenophobic campaigns have massively affected people living in Virginia. After the Pearl Harbor attack, all Japanese people living in America, regardless of status, were categorized as enemy nationals and ordered to be moved into designated camps. Much like Donald Trump’s movement of immigrants into a hotel in Panama, Japanese people living in Virginia were sent to live in the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia with no notice given to the hotel. This example illustrates how xenophobia is executed at a state level. Promotion of this type of paranoia has also led to attacks such as hate crimes committed on Asian people during the Covid-19 pandemic and Muslim and Arab people after 9/11.
One of the current xenophobia campaigns happening in Virginia, such as the intent to defund “sanctuary cities” mentioned above by Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, rely on the same misinformation and stigmas that fueled the previously listed targets on immigrants. Sears and other Republicans are using xenophobic disinformation to carry out their agenda in cities with high immigrant populations. While there are some institutions and jurisdictions that have been listed by ICE according to their levels of cooperation, but there are no cities that are immune to the reach of federal enforcement. Governor Youngkin’s and Lieutenant Governor Sears’ support for “defunding sanctuary cities” is based off of a label for cities that is nonexistent, similar to Republicans very recent focus on CRT without being able to correctly define the term. Tweets like Sears’ feed into the xenophobic paranoia that immigrants, who are being stereotyped as criminals, have institutional protection.
Another method of abusing immigrants is the use of racial profiling to arrest people in many different environments. This racist reasoning has been used to emotionally manipulate people into mistreatment and disenfranchisement of a community that is much more likely to be exploited than they are likely to cause harm.
In 2006, while robberies were down in Prince William County, robberies of Hispanic people rose, as immigrants are an extremely vulnerable community. During this rise in attacks on Hispanic people, three local teenagers set out to kill an immigrant, with their specific mission being to “get a Mexican”. They murdered Serafin “Pedro” Alvarez Negrete, a 32 year old husband and father, shooting him seven times. According to Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney John B. Arledge, the teens kept a receipt from Negrete that showed that he had recently sent money home. Aldredge explained why immigrants are especially vulnerable to attacks saying, “The problem is that they make good victims, and they have been targeted because they are disinclined to report the robberies.” This exemplifies how communities suffer when immigrants are afraid for their lives, as potential helpers and witnesses tend to be more afraid of retaliation than the harm they witness.
Despite efforts from Virginia leadership to magnify the criminality of immigrants while minimizing their vulnerability, Virginia communities and organizations are already pushing back against ICE raids, and maintaining that ICE has made neighborhoods less safe. Speaking to the true motive of the raids on their website, We Are Casa, an immigrants’ rights organization with a base in Virginia says, “While the government argues they are focused on specific targets, this is really just whitewashing their goal of eradicating immigrant communities from Virginia and beyond.” Social media users are also speaking out against the goal of the raids, which many people believe are just to appease Donald Trump’s base, who were told that there would be a crackdown on immigration. People are also teaching others within their communities about their rights, and putting out warnings on social media when ICE agents are spotted.
As community members continue to come together to protect each other, it is clear that the Youngkin administration as well as the Trump administration do not care about the safety of citizens. Immigrants have rights and the vast majority have not done anything that warrants them being rounded up, abused, and deported. Regardless of immigration status, it is abhorrent that any administration would stoke anxiety in students, workers, community members, children, and more to satisfy the call for scapegoating the Latino community. Virginians know exactly who is putting their communities at risk, and it is not those who are foreign-born or people from a particular ethnicity. The support that Virginia residents lack is the fault of leaders putting power and money into disinforming the public and adding fuel to division. Those who have the power to uplift candidates and vote for those who want to protect immigrants should do so in the greatest number possible. Xenophobic policy has been wreaking havoc on the Latino community, and the danger of anti-immigrant initiatives past the point of being imminent. Xenophobia is insatiable, and the history of action against immigrants to satisfy fearful constituents is not short at all. If anti-immigrant sweeps continue, Virginia will repeat it.