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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — At least two people were arrested in Alexandria this month as part of an immigration enforcement operation that produced 1,328 arrests across Virginia and Maryland, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday.
The operation, which DHS called Operation Safe Community - Washington, D.C., ran from Aug. 1 to Aug. 14. Officers focused on the Washington suburbs but made arrests throughout both states, the department said.
Those are the same two weeks in which Alexandria residents and Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., described a sharp increase in enforcement activity across Northern Virginia — activity the city says it is never told about in advance.
What DHS says it did
DHS said the operation arrested people whose criminal histories include convictions for sexual battery, kidnapping, driving while intoxicated, hit-and-run, identity theft and robbery, and arrests for murder, attempted murder and rape. Officers also arrested members of MS-13, the 18th Street Gang and Tren de Aragua, it said.
The department said almost 400 of the 1,328 people arrested have been convicted of or charged with crimes in the United States. It did not describe criminal histories for the remaining 930 or so, or say how many were arrested solely for immigration violations. The release refers to those arrested throughout as "criminal alien offenders."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officers had arrested "sexual assailants, kidnappers, drunk drivers, robbers, and gang members," and said sanctuary politicians in Virginia and Maryland were putting the needs of people in the country illegally over public safety. Patricia Hyde, acting assistant director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, said removing those arrested makes communities safer.
A separate DHS release on Aug. 7 said nearly 70% of ICE arrests nationally are of people charged with or convicted of a crime. The share the department reported for this operation is under a third. DHS did not address the difference.
The two Alexandria arrests
DHS named 10 of the 1,328 people it said were arrested. Two were arrested in Alexandria, according to the department, which did not say how many arrests were made in the city overall or in any other jurisdiction.
The department said Angel Gabriel Ortiz-Hernandez, of Guatemala, has been arrested on charges of rape of a mentally incapacitated victim and two counts of aggravated sexual battery of an incapacitated victim. It listed no convictions for him.
It said Rowan Andrew Brown, of Jamaica, has convictions for identity theft, kidnapping an adult and illegal re-entry, and has been arrested on a fraud allegation.
Both men remain in ICE custody pending removal, DHS said. It did not say where or when the charges it listed arose, whether any case remains pending, or how any of them were resolved. An arrest is not a conviction, and a person who has been arrested is presumed innocent unless convicted.
What Virginia court records show
A search of Virginia's Online Case Information System, which covers the state's circuit and general district courts, returns five cases under the name Angel Gabriel Ortiz-Hernandez.
Three are felony counts filed in Alexandria Circuit Court in October 2023 under a single case number: one charging intercourse with a victim through mental incapacity and two charging sexual assault through mental incapacity. The alleged offense dates are June 2022 and October 2020.
All three were dismissed March 7, 2024. Jury trial dates set for that month were withdrawn. The records show no conviction.
The other two cases stem from a 2017 public intoxication charge in Arlington, a Class 4 misdemeanor. The records show a guilty finding in general district court that was appealed and then dismissed in circuit court in November 2018.
The court system does not display full dates of birth, and The Alexandria Brief could not independently confirm that the person named in those cases is the person DHS said it arrested. The defendant's listed city and ZIP code are in Alexandria, and the records list "Ortiz Hernandez, Angel Gabriel" among the names used.
A search under the name Rowan Andrew Brown returned no Virginia cases. DHS said in its Aug. 7 release that Brown's kidnapping and identity theft convictions are from Boston. That release identified him as among a group arrested the previous day but did not say where. Aug. 6 falls within the operation's window, so the two releases may describe the same arrest.
The Alexandria Brief has asked ICE and DHS whether the charges listed for Ortiz-Hernandez are the Alexandria cases, whether the department was aware they had been dismissed, where in the city the two arrests occurred, and whether Brown was arrested once or twice.
What residents described during the same period
ICE Out of Alexandria, a local coalition, said in an Aug. 10 release that two people were detained that morning from a work vehicle on West Glebe Road in the Chirilagua neighborhood, and that four others had been detained from a nearby apartment complex on Aug. 8. The Alexandria Brief has not independently confirmed those accounts, and DHS's release does not say whether they were part of the operation.
Beyer said Aug. 18 that his office had received reports of several ICE encounters in Northern Virginia over the previous 10 days involving what he called unjustified violence or apparently warrantless detention, and urged residents to exercise caution. His office has not said whether any of those reports came from Alexandria.
The next day, Beyer and five other House Democrats asked the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to investigate an Aug. 10 encounter in the Bailey's Crossroads neighborhood of Falls Church, in which they said a masked ICE agent pointed a gun at Carolina Molina, a U.S. citizen, without justification.
After that encounter, DHS issued an unattributed statement calling Molina an anti-ICE agitator and saying she had attempted to harm officers by weaponizing her vehicle. The lawmakers, who reviewed her dashcam and cellphone footage, said the video does not support that account and noted agents left without detaining or charging her. DHS has not publicly responded to the letter, which set an Aug. 31 deadline.
What the city says
Alexandria officials say they receive no notice of federal immigration operations in the city.
Neither the city manager, City Council nor state officials are formally notified when ICE activity increases, according to a city webpage on the status of ICE operations that was last updated Aug. 11, during the operation. Federal enforcement is conducted independently of the city, the page says, and the city does not assist with civil immigration enforcement. The page directs residents who see armed, masked, unidentified people to call 911.
Alexandria police will not assist ICE in civil enforcement, the page says, but officers are barred by law from impeding ICE operations. Officers arrest people only on confirmation of an active criminal warrant through the National Crime Information Center, according to the city, and will not arrest anyone based solely on an administrative warrant or civil immigration detainer.
Mullin's statement did not name a jurisdiction. Alexandria's published position is that it is not a sanctuary jurisdiction under any use of the term that refers to violating federal or state law. The city says it complies with all federal and state immigration laws and has no 287(g) agreement allowing local officers to enforce federal immigration law.
The jail
The Alexandria Sheriff's Office is not a city department, and the sheriff is independently elected. City Council does not oversee it.
ICE took custody of 23 people from the Alexandria jail between Jan. 1 and June 30, according to figures the Sheriff's Office publishes — about 1.7% of the 1,369 people arrested in Alexandria and booked there over the same period. The office reported 54 transfers in 2025 and 43 in 2024.
Whether those transfers are required is disputed. City Council said in November 2024 that it does not support voluntary participation in ICE procedures and asked Sheriff Sean Casey to stop transferring people on ICE administrative warrants, as the Arlington and Fairfax sheriffs have done since 2022. Casey says he has no choice. Once his office receives a lawful federal administrative arrest warrant, he wrote on a Sheriff's Office webpage, it is obligated to transfer custody.
"Following the law is not optional, it is mandatory," Casey wrote. His office says it does not transfer anyone on an ICE detainer and does not hold anyone past a release date.
DHS's release describes street-level enforcement and did not say whether either Alexandria arrest involved the jail.
Neither DHS nor ICE had responded as of publication.
The city maintains a page on the status of ICE operations at alexandriava.gov/Immigration, including flyers in five languages on what to do when encountering unidentified law enforcement, and a non-emergency police line at 703-746-4444 for reporting ICE activity that poses no immediate danger.
