Articles

Originally published in: ARLnow

Arlington’s congressman is quarreling with the Department of Homeland Security following a visit to one of Virginia’s immigration detention centers.

The federal department publicly criticized U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D) in a press release after he visited Farmville Detention Center on Friday. It accused him of prioritizing detainees with criminal convictions over crime victims.

“He continues to do the bidding of dangerous criminal illegal aliens that endanger his own constituents,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “When will Congressman Beyer meet with the American victims of these illegal aliens’ violent crimes?”

Beyer fired back via a spokesperson on social media, criticizing conditions at the detention facility about an hour and 15 minutes southwest of Richmond.

“Federal regulations require minimum standards of care for all detainees, and unfortunately the medical resources at this facility were clearly woefully inadequate to meet those standards,” Aaron Fritschner, Beyer’s deputy chief of staff, said on X.

“Improving these conditions would be a far better use of time for the staff of the Department of Homeland Security than attacking Members of Congress for doing their jobs by engaging in oversight of the Executive Branch.”

Beyer, who had been talking about visiting Farmville for months, requested to meet “a number of detainees” at the detention center. They included people who had been kept in solitary confinement, who had recently experienced mental health crises and who had faced long delays in getting access to crucial medical treatment, Fritschner said.

DHS said that the detainees also included people convicted of assault and battery, burglary, distribution of drugs and driving under the influence. The agency claims that two of them are gang members, although only one detainee is listed as having a conviction for gang participation.

In an interview with the local news site WRIC, Beyer described “an enormous medical burden” at the detention center, which he said has only one physician and is struggling to get more nurses.

“Rep. Beyer also met with an older man who was detained by ICE when he went to his green card interview,” Fritschner told ARLnow. “DHS did not include this man in their list, but it’s the kind of case that has so many people in our community upset about what DHS and ICE are doing.”

Beyer told WRIC that “maybe as many as three quarters” of detainees at the center “only have a civil reason for being there.”

DHS disputes this, claiming that 66% of people detained at the center have been either charged or convicted of crimes in the United States.