During Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s press conference, which just ended a few minutes ago, on Virginia’s preparations for the upcoming winter storm, she was asked a couple questions that are a sad reflection of the times we’re currently living in (with people, particularly in immigrant communities, feeling rightfully distrustful of law enforcement]. See below for video and highlights:
Gov. Spanberger: “I’ll speak speak to this briefly because I do want to make sure we’re able to touch on all questions related to the winter storm. My executive order repealing Executive Order 47 [note: see here for more – Spanberger ordered that “state and local law enforcement should not be required to divert their limited resources to enforces federal civil immigration laws – it is the responsibiility of federal law enforcement“] was an important first step in ensuring that we are not moving or reallocating state and local resources away from the first responder duties that I think today highlights just how extraordinarily important, whether it is investigating crimes or being ready to support a community in need, that the prior executive order number 47 had created some real challenges. Ultimately I am looking into every step forward that we can take as a Commonwealth to ensure that our communities are safe and protected and that…any law enforcement activities within the state are understood to be what they are. Frankly, the fear and concern that we’ve seen in other places where people without any sort of designation, unannounced, wearing masks, are taking people off the streets, the level of fear that that’s created and the level of distrust and confusion that creates is certainly not contributing to any strengthening of our communities, let alone keeping our communities safer. So we are continuing on working in coordination with Secretary Meador to ensure that Virginia can be an example for the rest of the country in terms of how it is that we recognize and delineate the differences between law enforcement activity, particularly those where there’s a warrant in hand, and the the types of sort of large-scale mass activities that create confusion, distrust and ultimately as we’ve seen in Minnesota, of tragedy.”
Gov. Spanberger: “I would say in all of our coordination, the priority is – and whether it’s local state police or Virginia National Guard resources, that depending upon the region might be supporting responses – their goal, their intent in this emergency is to get people who need to get to a hospital…to get people who are stranded on the roads back home to someplace safe, those who are in danger to get them someplace safe, whether it’s a warming station or to a hospital. That is the goal of our response in this moment. And anyone who is afraid as it relates to kind of some of the larger scale immigration, you know, our enforcement efforts, our goal, our intent and what we expect to see is that folks on the road are doing response duties to emergencies or to efforts to clear roads.”
The full press conference is below.
