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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Rep. Don Beyer said Tuesday that his office has received reports of several encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Northern Virginia over the past 10 days involving what he described as unjustified violence or apparently warrantless detention.
Beyer, whose district includes Alexandria, said the reports describe a pattern: agents stopping people outside or on the street, asking for identification, and responding with force when their instructions are questioned.
"I urge Northern Virginians to exercise extreme caution," Beyer said in a statement. He said agents are "regularly ignoring their training and departmental regulations that call for deescalation."
The congressman named two people. He said he is seeking details about injuries to Jose Mejia Hernandez, who told the Spanish-language outlet Univision he was hurt during an encounter with agents in Arlington, and called Mejia Hernandez's account disturbing. Beyer said that if it proves to be another instance of unjustified violence by ICE agents, those responsible should be held accountable.
He also said agents were filmed pointing a gun at Carolina Molina, a U.S. citizen, after she verbally challenged them and recorded the encounter — activity Beyer said is protected by the First Amendment. He said he expects to meet with her.
The Alexandria Brief has not independently verified either account. The Alexandria Brief has reached out to ICE for comment.
Whether Alexandria is among them
Beyer's statement does not say where the other encounters occurred, and his office has not said whether any were in Alexandria.
Two of the days he describes fall within a period when ICE Out of Alexandria, a local coalition, said detentions took place in the city's Chirilagua neighborhood. In a release issued Aug. 10, the group said two people were taken from a work vehicle near a convenience store on West Glebe Road that morning, and that four others were detained from a nearby apartment complex on Aug. 8. The group described the detentions as abductions carried out by masked agents.
The Alexandria Brief has not independently confirmed those accounts. The Alexandria Brief has reached out to ICE for comment, as well as the Alexandria Police Department. As of the time of publishing, neither organization has responded.
The same release called on Alexandria's mayor and City Council to ban automated license plate readers citywide, arguing ICE uses the technology to locate immigrants. Virginia law bars police from sharing license plate data with federal agencies without a court order, and Alexandria's police directive lists immigration enforcement as a prohibited use. A list published Tuesday on the city's Flock Safety page shows 161 agencies with access to Alexandria's camera data, all of them Virginia entities.
Ryan Belmore
Recent oversight
Beyer has taken a series of steps on immigration enforcement this year.
On Aug. 6, he joined Reps. James Walkinshaw and Suhas Subramanyam in an unannounced oversight visit to ICE's temporary holding facility in Chantilly, following reports of overcrowding and long stays at a site built to process people briefly before transfer. The lawmakers said they did not observe overcrowding, and that ICE staff told them the agency was complying with a court order limiting stays at such facilities to 12 hours. They said they would continue monitoring it.
Ryan Belmore
In January, after federal agents killed two people in Minneapolis, Beyer called for the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and said Congress should not fund the department without new guardrails.
Beyer's statement Tuesday closed by pointing constituents to know-your-rights resources published by the American Civil Liberties Union, which advise that filming law enforcement in public is protected by the First Amendment but that people should not obstruct agents and should comply with orders to move back, challenging them afterward.
