Earlier this year, as tens of thousands of visitors poured into Washington, D.C., to witness the historic inauguration of President Donald Trump, school administrators in neighboring Fairfax County, Virginia posted signs in nine languages about the district’s sanctuary policy throughout the county’s 199 public schools and centers.
Among those schools was Fairfax County Adult High School. According to the latest available data, in academic year 2023-2024, the school was comprised of 241 students, and 92% of them were English language learners. In the 2020-2021 academic year, prior to the inception of the county’s sanctuary policy, there were 162 students in Fairfax County Adult High School, and 85% of them were English language learners.
According to a source who works for Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), the taxpayer-funded adult high school, which the county launched in 1980 to help adults under 22-years-old attain their diploma or general educational development (GED), currently is “filled with illegal immigrants.”
This is just one of many ways in which Fairfax County’s sanctuary status has impacted the community and its residents.
In January 2021, with the passage of its sanctuary policy, the “Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy,” Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors, composed of nine Democrats and one Republican, invited a variety of problems to the affluent suburb. The degradation of public education, increase in violent crime, and budgetary woes are top among them.
Fairfax County’s 12 Democrat-endorsed school board members further institutionalized and implemented the sanctuary policy in the public school system via the “Trust Policy” in April 2022. The district’s website explains that the school board’s policy aligns with the broader county policy “to ensure that FCPS students and families can access FCPS benefits and services without the fear that information will be disclosed, directly or indirectly, to federal immigration officials.”
To that end, following Trump’s decisive victory in the November 2024 presidential election, the elected leadership and superintendent of the ninth-largest public school district in America has engaged in a campaign to inform school administrators, teachers, parents, and students how to evade federal immigration authorities. Aside from its website resources and emails, Michelle Reid, the superintendent, and other senior district leaders, further have counseled school administrators on how to interact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the name of “safety.”
The flood of illegal immigrants into the once-flagship public school district has increased costs and degraded its educational capabilities for other students. The number of students learning English has increased substantially since the inception of the Trust Policy. From 2021 to 2026, the number of English language learners has increased by 13.3% (4,417 students) across Fairfax County’s public schools, with an estimated total of 37,742 English language learners enrolled ahead of Fiscal Year 2026. With a proposed fiscal 2026 expenditure of an extra $5,572 per English language learning student, the district’s price tag for ESOL instruction is now $210 million, up from $93.9 million in fiscal 2019.
Many of the students learning English are congregated in six high schools that are on the brink of failing accreditation, particularly in the areas of chronic absenteeism and standardized test scores.
In addition to the language barrier, another problem a sanctuary county faces is that many of the students arriving from other countries have had a disruption in learning before they are enrolled in Fairfax County’s public schools. A 15-year-old student arriving from Guatemala, for example, might not have attended school since he was 10. Such students are enrolled in high school, some with only a fifth-grade education, and entered into the Student Information System (SIS) under the code “E1R.” In Justice High School, which has been “accredited with conditions” for the past two years, there were 115 students labeled “E1R” in 2023-2024, in addition to the school’s 197 newly arrived students from other countries without a disruption in learning (labeled “E1Q”).
Instead of challenging the county’s sanctuary policy, which puts its public schools in an impossible position, Reid and members of the school board are in the process of redistricting for equity. “Equal outcomes” is at the center of the district’s strategic plan. To that end, district leaders intend to move high-performing students with good attendance to low-performing schools to equalize schools’ resources and academic achievements, which also includes spreading out the English language learners across the district’s schools.
Fairfax County Public School officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Crime in the area has also increased substantially since the inception of Fairfax County’s sanctuary policy. From 2022 to 2023, violent crime in Fairfax County increased 8.7%, the seventh highest increase in the nation.
By design, it is impossible to decipher how much of the increase in crime is attributable to illegal immigrants. Last September, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information from the Fairfax County Police Department. In the FOIA request, I asked, “How many arrests have been made of illegal immigrants in Fairfax County since January 2021?”
The Fairfax County Police Department responded that the Trust Policy “dictates strong limitations on the ability to share Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) law enforcement material.” They continued, “[T]he FCPD does not track crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. Accordingly, we are unable to provide any materials responsive to your request.”
Yet in spite of the county leadership’s legislative muzzle on its law enforcement officers, multiple media reports have provided evidence of illegal immigrants’ involvement in violent crimes. The common thread among them is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers are ignored and violent offenders are released back onto the streets of Fairfax County — again, a direct consequence of the county’s sanctuary policy. In November 2024, for example, Denis Humberto Navarette Romero, an illegal alien from Honduras, allegedly raped a woman on a hiking trail in Fairfax County mere days after he was released from jail for another sex crime.
Navarette Romero had a long rap sheet and in a just world would have been taken off the streets long ago. In Fairfax County, however, proclaimed “safety” for illegal immigrants is a priority, to the detriment of actual safety for citizens and legal residents. Among Navarette Romero’s other interactions with the authorities, he had been arrested previously on felony charges of assaulting a police officer. Steve Descano, the George Soros-funded Democratic commonwealth attorney who is notoriously soft on crime, reportedly reduced those charges to misdemeanors without asking for input from Herndon Police.
The increases in crime and the enrollment of English language learners and students with significant disruptions in learning to the public education system are proving expensive. There is a high price tag for the county leadership’s continuation of its sanctuary policy. Fairfax County’s residents are feeling the fiscal pinch as officials hike local property taxes to cover these unwanted expenses.
The problem is Fairfax County can’t afford this financial burden. The county’s budget is already staring down a $300 million shortfall for Fiscal Year 2026. Meanwhile, the leadership of Fairfax County Public Schools has a proposed budget of $4 billion, an increase of about $300 million from its fiscal 2025 budget.
The budget’s drafters are particularly tone deaf, especially given that the revenue base is far from certain as the future of the county’s federal workers and government contracts is unclear under the new Trump administration. In other words, while the price of services for illegal immigrants drive up costs and property taxes, many of the county’s residents are losing their jobs. When asked for comment, Fairfax County officials did not respond.
Fairfax County’s residents are waking up to the ugly consequences of the poorly considered “Trust Policy.” Taxpayers are hemorrhaging more money each year to live in a county that is less safe and has a sinking public education system. Whether Fairfax County leadership will actually listen is another question.
