The Arlington County Board has voted to pay $2,000 in tax money to the families of illegal migrants who are arrested by immigration enforcement officers.
The leaders of the Virginia county created a $50,000 fund of tax dollars to dole out to family members for “basic needs” such as housing, food, and utilities.
“We stand with our immigrant families, and we will not stop doing so,” Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said after the unanimous vote, according to ARLNow. “We are valuing the families of those that have been displaced and removed.”
“This investment in our families is about the urgency we have seen in our community in the last month,” de Ferranti added. “And we are going to respond with care. and we are going to respond proudly. That’s what this $50,000 is toward with Thrive.”
The board also voted not to require family members to prove that their detained wage earner was legally allowed to work in the U.S.
The government funds will be distributed by left-wing organization Arlington Thrive, an NGO funded by the likes of Washington Forest Foundation, the Kaiser Foundation, and the United Way, among others.
The board was spurred to launch the program during a September 2 board meeting as a response to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge launched in August across the Washington D.C. area that resulted in the arrests of more than 1,300 illegal migrants.
Former Acting ICE Director and former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey ripped the county leaders and said they may even be breaking federal law by funding illegal aliens in such a way, not to mention setting up an atmosphere that will draw even more illegals to the county.
“Arlington County is putting aside money for presumably people that are not even legal in the country, as opposed to giving it to Arlington County residents or American citizens,” he said, according to WJLA-TV. “But I think the one thing that’s really interesting about what they’re doing here, there’s this alien harboring statute, a federal statute that makes it illegal to do something that induces or encourages someone to come to the country illegally or to reside in the country illegally, and I think Arlington County has a real problem with that statute.”
“They’re going to induce more illegal aliens into Arlington County, which will also cost the taxpayers even more money,” added Fahey. “There’s probably so many things that could be done that are better for the taxpayers and the residents and the legal residents of Arlington County.”
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