The Department of Justice said Wednesday it was initiating an investigation into Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano over his office’s handling of cases involving undocumented immigrants.
In a letter to Descano, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon said the DOJ is investigating whether his office violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Safe Streets Act, which both “prohibit recipients of Federal financial assistance from discriminating based upon race, color, or national origin.”
The investigation, it said, would also determine if Descano’s office “discriminated against United States citizens by offering preferential treatment only to illegal alien criminal defendants.”
In a news release, Dhillon said her office would “not allow local prosecutors to pick and choose winners based on their immigration status,” and would work to see if Descano’s legal decisions have put “the community at risk in offering sweetheart deals to illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes.”
The policy in question was adopted by Descano’s office in 2020 as part of its guidelines for plea bargaining. It instructs assistant Commonwealth’s attorneys to “consider immigration consequences where possible” and states that “prosecutors shall consider … the collateral immigration consequences of the specific crime(s) the defendant is charged with.”
The webpage detailing the policy is no longer publicly available on his office’s website.
Descano did not respond to WTOP’s requests for comment but defended his policies in a post on X: “Today, I received notice of a Department of Justice investigation into my office regarding one of our policies. My policies are fair, legal, and reflect the values of my community.”
Washington Post reporter Salvador Rizzo told WTOP’s Nick Iannelli that a second prong of the investigation is a “pattern and practice investigation” that usually leads to strict reforms, especially when used against police departments that have constitutional policing issues.
“Since Descano was first elected in 2019, there has been a lot of conservative pushback to some of his decisions when he’s seeking particular sentences for defendants who might be deported, depending on the seriousness of the crime that he charges,” Rizzo said.
Critics have said that Descano’s office has offered more lenient plea deals to undocumented immigrants accused of serious felonies so they avoid deportation.
“He’s become much more vocal, especially this year, in defending his policies,” Rizzo said.
Along with Arlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, another local Democratic prosecutor, Descano has been the recent target of the House Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement. He’s scheduled to testify before the subcommittee next week.
“Descano has been, at first, I think, a little bit just dismissive and maybe even indifferent about these accusations. And now he sees a need to really more strongly speak up for himself and defend these policies as legal,” Rizzo said.