Sixty members of the Virginia National Guard have been deployed to provide logistics and administrative support to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents throughout the state.
An August 8th statement outlined the duties assigned to soldiers including answering phones, data entry, appointment scheduling, biometric collection, vehicle maintenance and tracking fleet expenses and utilization.
Soldiers will remain under the control of the Virginia Governor and military leadership, but report directly to ICE leadership during their activation. This is classified as a Title 32 status activation and is federally funded.
National Guard soldiers will not be making arrests but will provide back-office support allowing law enforcement agents to spend more time in the field. (RELATED: Spanberger: Police Immigration Enforcement “A Distraction of Resources”)
Immigration advocacy groups have condemned the mobilization while Democrat Gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger has called local-federal partnerships with ICE “a distraction of resources.”
Immigration remains a top-three issue for Virginia voters ahead of this year’s statewide elections. Illegal immigration remains linked to other issues including cost of living and taxes. Estimates are that Virginia tax payers are on the hook for $1.8 billion cost annually caused by illegal immigrants.
A House Budget committee estimated that each illegal immigrant cost taxpayers about $68,000.
The National Guard has been authorized by 20 states so far to aid federal law enforcement agents but only about 2% of the authorized troops have been mobilized.
“We won’t speculate on further operations,” a spokesperson for the US Defense Department told Fox News, “but can tell you that the department is a planning organization and continues to work and plan with other agency partners to protect federal assets and personnel.”
The Virginia Homeland Security Taskforce, a partnership between federal and state law enforcement, has already arrested more than 3,000 illegal immigrants in Virginia this year. (RELATED: Virginia Protester’s Racist Sign Targeting Winsome Earle-Sears Sparks Outrage)