Federal Judge Blocks Virginia Law Limiting Local Police Cooperation With ICE

A federal judge in Richmond has blocked Virginia from enforcing new restrictions on how local police cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, siding with the Trump administration in a dispute over a law that Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed this spring. Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Payne issued a preliminary injunction Monday barring the commonwealth from applying the measure against federal immigration officers, employees or agencies, and from interfering with local agreements already in place under Section 287(g) of federal immigration law, which authorizes trained state and local officers to perform certain federal enforcement duties.

The law at issue, made up of companion bills SB 783 in the state Senate and HB 1441 in the House of Delegates, took effect July 1 after Spanberger signed it in April. It required Virginia localities with existing 287(g) partnerships to rewrite those agreements by September 1 to add a dozen new conditions, including a requirement that officers act only on valid judicial warrants and a ban on enforcement actions at schools. Payne found the federal government was likely to succeed on claims that the law violates both the Constitution's Contract Clause, by retroactively altering existing agreements, and its Supremacy Clause, because it directly regulates the conduct of federal law enforcement in an area of exclusive federal authority.

The injunction lets existing 287(g) partnerships continue operating without the added conditions while the underlying lawsuit proceeds, but it leaves one restriction intact: localities and agencies that have never joined the program still cannot enter new agreements for the first time. Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said his office would move immediately to challenge the ruling. "My office strongly disagrees with the judge's order and will urgently file a motion to stay this ruling and appeal the temporary injunction," Jones said, arguing the law falls squarely within the state's authority over its own localities and was intended to keep local governments from "devoting critical resources toward carrying out responsibilities that rest solely with the federal government."

Coverage from WTOP framed the ruling as an early test of how far a state can go in restricting local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Jones's office, whose public statements on the case have emphasized the state's police-powers argument, has not said when it expects to file its stay request, though Payne indicated a fuller written opinion explaining his reasoning would follow.

The dispute is one of several nationwide in which Democratic-led states have tried to limit local involvement in federal immigration enforcement only to run into court challenges from the Trump administration, which has pursued 287(g) expansion as a central tool of its enforcement strategy. Virginia's governor's office had framed the law as restoring local control over how deeply Virginia police and sheriffs get involved in federal civil immigration matters, distinct from state and local criminal law enforcement. With the injunction in place, sheriffs in localities covered by existing 287(g) agreements can continue operating under their prior terms for now, while Jones's promised appeal sets up a fight likely to reach the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in the coming months.