Dear Governor Morrisey,

I, the undersigned resident of West Virginia, ask you to immediately withdraw the state’s 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to stop encouraging counties and municipalities to enter them. The people caught up in this program are overwhelmingly oThe people being taken are our neighbors, coworkers, and fellow parishioners, not the "violent criminals" the program falsley claims to pursue.

287(g) breaks trust between police and the communities they serve, so victims and witnesses stop reporting crimes. When a routine traffic stop can end in deportation, immigrant families stop reporting crimes, stop cooperating as witnesses, and stop calling for help. Everyone is less safe when law abiding members of the community fear the police.

287(g) makes our state poorer with no reduction in crime to justify the waste our taxpayer dollars. Our agencies are already short-staffed, yet these agreements shift training, detention, and transport costs onto state and county budgets that ICE does not reimburse.  And it exposes West Virginia and its counties to costly lawsuits. Across the country, 287(g) agreements have produced lawsuits over racial profiling, unlawful detention, and civil-rights violations. West Virginia taxpayers will bear those costs.

When you announced the program, you said it would “deport violent criminals and safeguard West Virginia.” The state’s own record shows otherwise:

•             Three out of four people arrested in West Virginia during “Operation Country Roads” had no criminal record at all. Of 593 arrests, only 42 involved any criminal charge, and the most common charge among those 42 was misdemeanor DUI.

•             No one was detained for sexual assault or any crime involving children, despite public claims to the contrary by federal officials. Just two arrests were for drug possession, both misdemeanors.

•             Before this administration, 90 percent of ICE detentions in West Virginia involved someone with a prior conviction. Since then, that figure has fallen to 17 percent, and the share with no criminal record has climbed from 4 percent to 64 percent.

•             Officials overstated the arrest total by roughly ten percent, claiming 650 West Virginia arrests when the records show 593.

West Virginia's own motto is Montani Semper Liberi. Turning state troopers and county deputies into immigration agents is not what mountaineers mean by freedom.

We ask you to end the state’s participation in 287(g) and let West Virginia law enforcement focus on West Virginia public safety.