CASA Virginia State Director Luis Aguilar issued the following statement after ICE announced it would further terrorize immigrant families in Prince William County, Virginia, for not cooperating with the agency.

“Prince William County won’t be browbeaten into submission and will instead rise above these dark words, meant to terrorize immigrant communities. The county has the support of the people. We worked too hard and too long for ICE to ignore what the jailboard already decided: Prince William County will not cooperate with ICE in pushing a deportation pipeline that has negative effects in our community. Arm-twisting the county into feeding Trump’s deportation force is just another example of how ICE bullies local and state governments, and this is unacceptable. We know that detaining and deporting immigrant mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers does not keep a community safe – just the opposite. We will be watching, ready to act to protect working families by telling them that they have rights.”

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With over 100,000 members across the states of Maryland, Virginia, and South Central Pennsylvania, CASA is the largest member-based Latino and immigrant organization in the mid-Atlantic region. Visit us at www.wearecasa.org and follow us on Twitter at @CASAforall