On Aug. 31, Fairfax County officials released an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, Israel Flores Ortiz, into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Last year, the 19-year-old was enrolled as a junior at Fairfax High School. In March, he was arrested and convicted of groping multiple female students at the school, some as young as 14 years old.
The decision to release Ortiz to ICE surprised many residents because it is completely out of character for local and state officials. Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors enacted the Trust Policy in 2021, which officially designated Fairfax County as a sanctuary county.
Fairfax County’s refusal to cooperate with ICE, however, had been in the works well before the Trust Policy. In 2018, for example, the Democrat-elected local sheriff, Stacey Kincaid, sent a letter to ICE refusing compliance. Kincaid wrote, “After the date of termination, May 23, 2018, the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office will not honor any requests to detain individuals subject to an administrative detention request…”
Fairfax County Public Schools are also fully committed to their own sanctuary policies, which help to protect students such as Ortiz, who are permitted to attend the district’s schools until they are 22 years old. In fact, when President Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2024, FCPS administrators responded by posting signs in nine languages about the district’s sanctuary policy throughout the county’s 199 public schools and centers.
And last summer, Dave Anderson, the senior district manager for student registration, sent an email to school-based registrars that states, “Based on recent Division Counsel guidance…FCPS will no longer retain copies of identification documents, including the student birth certificate, in the student’s cumulative file…For clarification purposes, identification documents refer to copies of a parent’s photo ID, such as a driver’s license, passport, etc.”
An inside source told IW Features that following Anderson’s email, district and school leaders allegedly have destroyed students’ identity documents to evade ICE. Fairfax County leaders are doing this with full support from Virginia’s new Democrat administration. On her first day as Virginia’s governor, Gov. Abigail Spanberger rescinded former Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order 47, which had expanded state and local cooperation with ICE. In February 2026, she went further and issued Executive Directive 1, directing Virginia State Police, Corrections, Wildlife, and Marine Resources to terminate their agreements with ICE. Then, in May 2026, Spanberger signed Executive Order 16, which restricts state agencies from participating in activities whose primary purpose is federal civil immigration enforcement and restricts federal immigration-enforcement use of Commonwealth property.
But now those policies have come back to bite them. Indeed, when Ortiz’s case rose to national prominence, the district hired a law firm for what appears to be a damage control investigation. District leaders assured the public that officials responded appropriately, but refused to release the final report.
Despite district leaders’ claims of propriety, IW Features learned in a Freedom of Information Act request that school officials did not file Title IX complaints when 13 female students accused Ortiz of groping their genitals in the hallways at school.
Fairfax County’s elected Commonwealth’s Attorney, Steve Descano, is further notoriously soft on crime, particularly in cases involving illegal immigrant defendants. Descano’s office charged Ortiz with multiple counts of assault and battery, not sexual assault, which carries a more significant sentence.
Ortiz has become an extremely inconvenient case for district and school leaders, as well as local and state elected officials. His presence in the county highlights why sanctuary policies are dangerous and how vulnerable children in their schools are to predators.
So while the county’s leaders finally did the right thing by complying with ICE in this case, it is far too little, far too late. They failed at virtually every step leading up to this moment. Their willingness to facilitate Ortiz’s deportation now appears less like a commitment to improving public safety in Fairfax County and more like an effort at self-preservation and image management.
