Spanberger vows to scrap Youngkin’s immigration order if elected governor

Democratic nominee for governor Abigail Spanberger says one of her first acts if elected would be to undo Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s February directive requiring Virginia law enforcement to help carry out federal immigration crackdowns — a policy she argues wastes local resources and undermines community trust.

“I would rescind his executive order, yes,” Spanberger told The Mercury in a lengthy policy interview earlier this month, referring to Youngkin’s Executive Order 47 issued in February. The order gave state police and corrections officers authority to perform certain immigration duties and also urged local jails to fully cooperate with federal deportation operations.

The governor said at the time the measure was meant to keep “dangerous criminal illegal immigrants” off Virginia’s streets. Spanberger countered that Youngkin’s approach illustrates how immigration enforcement can pull local agencies away from their core responsibilities while pushing state agencies into federal civil enforcement.

“Our immigration system is absolutely broken,” she said. “The idea that we would take local police officers or local sheriff’s deputies in amid all the things that they have to do, like community policing or staffing our jails or investigating real crimes, so that they can go and tear families apart … that is a misuse of those resources.”

Spanberger’s stance sets up a sharp contrast with her opponent — Republican nominee Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who has embraced the order and tied it to her own story as a legal immigrant from Jamaica. 

The divide between the two candidates underscores how immigration has become one of the most combustible issues in Virginia’s 2025 campaign for governor — and how Youngkin’s policies continue to shape the race even as he prepares to leave office in January.

That influence stretches beyond Youngkin’s executive order. In late February, Youngkin also launched the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force, a sweeping federal-state operation staffed with more than 200 personnel from agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, state police and corrections, which has claimed hundreds to thousands of immigration and gang-related arrests in Virginia. 

Keep enforcement federal, Spanberger says

Spanberger, who represented Virginia’s 7th Congressional District in Congress before launching her gubernatorial bid, argued that immigration enforcement should be handled by federal officials with judicial oversight, not by local police diverted from their own duties.

She said Democrats are often wrongly portrayed as opposing law enforcement when they object to policies like Youngkin’s that conscript local agencies into immigration sweeps. 

“If someone has a criminal violation at the state level or at the federal level … local resources are required to arrest that person or put them in a local jail before transferring them to federal custody. Absolutely the locality should participate in that,” she said.

But Spanberger insisted the standard should be the same for immigration cases as for any other criminal matter.

“They have to have a warrant to pick somebody up off the street, so they meet that same standard,” she said. “And they can easily go get that detention order signed by a judge or a magistrate, if they want that local support.”

Without those safeguards, Spanberger argued, local cooperation with ICE undermines community policing, creates constitutional concerns and strains already tight budgets. She pointed to her former district of Prince William County, which she said spent more than $1 million housing detainees under a prior partnership with federal immigration authorities.

Earle-Sears emphasizes rule of law

Earle-Sears, who initially agreed to a similar policy interview with The Mercury but canceled minutes before it was to take place, has publicly and repeatedly defended Youngkin’s executive order.

“I am a legal immigrant and now a naturalized citizen. Working together, the governor, attorney general, and I have made Virginia safer,” she said in February when announcing the policy. “Now, working with President Trump, we can take on the scourge of dangerous and violent illegal immigrants.”

In December, while unveiling a “No Sanctuary Cities” budget proposal, she described the bureaucratic hurdles her own family went through when immigrating to the U.S. and argued that others should follow the same path. 

“My father and I had to file documents and wait to be granted permission to enter the United States. Under Governor Youngkin’s leadership, Virginia stands firm: we are not a sanctuary state,” she said.

“The rule of law is not negotiable — it is the foundation of our safety, our freedom, and the promise of opportunity that defines America,” she added.

Earle-Sears’ broader ideas on immigration remain unclear, as she has not gone beyond a handful of public statements and her campaign website offers no issue page outlining her positions.

Dispute over Youngkin’s deportation claims

The candidates also diverge sharply on Youngkin’s claim in July that all 2,500 immigrants arrested and deported by the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force are “violent criminals.”

Spanberger said she has seen no evidence to support the governor’s sweeping assertion. 

“If they were violent criminals, presumably, they were arrested on those charges for the violent crime that they committed, in which case, there would be clear documentation,” she said. “Frankly, as somebody who believes in upholding the law, I want people to be arrested for the crimes that they are committing.”

Civil rights groups have also raised alarms, arguing that Youngkin’s mandate is “playing politics with people’s lives.” 

“For years, Virginia’s governor has been pushing the same dangerous, false narrative as the Trump administration that immigrants commit crime at higher rates than people who were born here, despite the fact that no data exists to support that conclusion,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia said in a statement.

Earle-Sears has not directly addressed the governor’s 2,500 figure but has frequently pointed to grim cases of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in arguing for tougher enforcement. 

“We’ve seen too many tragic stories after dangerous criminals in this country illegally were put back on the streets, and this executive order will make sure we send them back to where they came from,” she said earlier this year.

The Laken Riley Act

The immigration debate has also touched on Spanberger’s record in Congress. 

Earle-Sears has faulted her for initially voting against the Laken Riley Act, named for a Georgia college student killed by a Venezuelan national who entered the country unlawfully. The law, which eventually passed after Spanberger left Congress, requires federal authorities to detain immigrants accused of theft and burglary while their cases proceed.

Spanberger said she opposed the bill in its first iteration because it “was essentially putting incredible burdens on localities removing any form of due process” and would not have prevented Riley’s murder. 

“As a mother of three daughters, I was deeply offended that they would utilize that young woman’s murder as a political talking point,” she said. “At the time of that vote, her father was in the press saying that he was deeply distressed by the fact that her murder was being utilized in the way that it was.”

David Richards, a political science professor at the University of Lynchburg, said Spanberger has staked out a position that balances criticism of Trump-era immigration policies with support for reforms viewed as moderate.

“Spanberger has been fairly vocal in criticizing the Trump administration’s methods of dealing with undocumented immigration,” Richards said. 

“Her voting record on bills centered around immigration has been mixed, supporting some of the more moderate bills, but voting ‘no’ on some key GOP bills like the No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act. … It falls in line with her presenting herself as a pragmatic candidate.”

By contrast, he said, Earle-Sears has been relatively quiet on immigration, surfacing the issue primarily when it intersects with her biography or when amplifying President Donald Trump’s agenda. 

“She did talk about the issue back in June, saying that she, as an immigrant, did things the ‘right way.’ But overall, she has skirted the issue,” Richards said. 

“She may feel that the issue is not one she can really win with in Virginia, although, as more immigration related arrests happen in the commonwealth, she may have to start talking about this.”

The bigger picture

The fight over immigration in Virginia is inseparable from national politics. Youngkin has aligned himself closely with Trump on enforcement strategies, boasting of joint operations with ICE and staging press events around courthouse raids and “gang and immigration sweeps” that have drawn criticism from Democrats and civil liberties groups.

Spanberger, while denouncing Youngkin’s executive order, has also argued governors should play a more constructive role in pushing Congress to modernize immigration law. She cited bipartisan bills like the Farm Workforce Modernization Act and the Dignity Act as examples of incremental progress, even if they fell short.

“There are many places where the governors of states can bang on the table and tell Congress, ‘Stop making this such a political issue that you campaign on every two years and just fix it,’” she said. 

She added that immigration is not only a humanitarian concern but also a pressing economic issue for Virginia, from hospitals seeking visas for foreign-trained nurses to seafood producers dependent on seasonal guest workers.

Earle-Sears, meanwhile, has emphasized border security and public safety, drawing a bright line between legal immigrants like herself and those who arrive unlawfully.

“Any local elected official who instructs law enforcement to defy efforts to keep Virginians safe abandons their duty and breaks the trust of the people they swore to protect,” she said last year.

Looking ahead

With polls showing immigration remains a top concern among Republican voters — and a complicated one among independents — the issue is likely to stay at the forefront of this year’s election cycle.

Spanberger is betting Virginians will see Youngkin’s executive order as overreach that diverts local resources and harms public safety by discouraging immigrant communities from reporting crimes. Earle-Sears is counting on voters to view strict enforcement as common sense, framed by her own story of navigating the legal immigration system.

“Maybe she is waiting for a Trump endorsement,” Richards said of Earle-Sears. “But if immigration remains in the headlines, she may not be able to avoid it.”

For now, voters face a stark choice between a Democrat who vows to unwind the governor’s crackdown and press Congress for broader reforms, and a Republican who pledges to double down on enforcement in the name of law and order.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.