EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears rebuked a plan announced Wednesday by her 2025 gubernatorial opponent Abigail Spanberger to rescind an executive order that gives law enforcement and jailers authority to work with ICE in particular circumstances.
"Well, we know she won't be able to do that because she's not going to win," Earle-Sears quipped in a Wednesday interview.
"The people of Virginia are going to vote for me because [Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s order is] common sense and is keeping them safe. They have been safe since we've been in office," she said.
Earle-Sears said she and Youngkin have overseen a one-third drop in statewide crime, and she dismissed Spanberger’s remarks — first made in a Virginia Mercury interview — as "dangerous ideas" that are "all theory; no practical usage."
Youngkin’s order sought to "maximize collaboration" with DHS and "us[e] all available methods to facilitate the arrest and deportation of inadmissible and removable criminal illegal immigrants."
To that end, Earle-Sears said Spanberger’s pledge ignores major developments in the battle against illegal immigrant gangs and the like.
"The number three MS-13 [was captured] right here in Manassas under her nose in her former neck of the woods," Earle-Sears said of Salvadoran national Henrry Josue Villatoro-Santos, who is alleged to be a top ranking member of the transnational gang.
Villatoro-Santos, 24, was arrested in March in Dale City – a middle-class suburb along I-95 between Fredericksburg and Washington – in an operation overseen by the FBI’s Manassas Field Office from the other side of Prince William County.
Spanberger previously represented the area in Congress – in a seat now held by Democrat Yevgeny "Eugene" Vindman, the twin brother of high-profile Trump impeachment figure Alexander Vindman.
In breaking the news earlier Wednesday, Spanberger said, "I would rescind [Youngkin’s] executive order, yes."
Spanberger said the Youngkin-Sears effort pulls local law enforcement away from their regular duties and wrongly encourages the state to dabble in federal roles.
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The Democrat called the U.S. immigration system "absolutely broken" and said allowing cops to help "tear families apart [is] a misuse of … resources."
Earle-Sears said officials in Richmond cannot focus on economic development and other top concerns of Virginians unless those constituents live in a safe environment.
Therefore, she said, separating themselves from DHS is counterproductive and "dangerous" to both the citizenry and the federal agents conducting the immigration operations.
The Republican nominee emphasized that she, too, is an immigrant — stressing that she came to the U.S. legally — and contrasted her story with that of many illegal immigrants arrested with criminal records, noting that her family came from Jamaica in search of opportunity and a better life.
"These criminal illegal immigrants, they come here for an opportunity to prey on us, and they prey on the very population that they're a part of," she said.
"We don't want that."
Youngkin also responded to the news, asking rhetorically if November’s "choice could be any more clear."
"In her very first act as governor, [Abigail Spanberger] promises to turn Virginia into a sanctuary state for dangerous illegal immigrants," Youngkin said on X.
"[Earle-Sears] promises to keep dangerous criminals off our streets," the term-limited governor said.