Arlington County, Virginia, has allocated $50,000 to a new program aimed at providing financial assistance to families of immigrants detained or deported by federal authorities. The initiative, approved by the County Board on Sept. 2, will funnel funds to the nonprofit Arlington Thrive, which will then distribute grants of up to $2,000 to cover basic needs for eligible families.
The program has drawn sharp criticism from Matthew Hurtt, chairman of the Arlington County GOP, who denounced the initiative as a "slush fund" that contradicts federal immigration policy and burdens local taxpayers. "This flies in the face of the Trump administration policy, and it is a detriment to taxpayers of Arlington – tens of thousands of whom are conservative and Republican and oppose this policy," Hurtt stated.
Arlington Thrive, as a nonprofit organization, is exempt from the transparency requirements typically applied to government agencies, a point Hurtt raised as a concern. The County Board voted 4-0 to endorse the plan, with Board Chair Matt de Ferranti emphasizing the county's commitment to supporting displaced families. "We stand with our immigrant families, and we will not stop doing so," de Ferranti said. "We are valuing the families of those that have been displaced and removed."
This development follows a recent large-scale immigration enforcement operation in the Washington, D.C., and Virginia area, which resulted in over 1,300 arrests of undocumented immigrants over a two-week period. In January, de Ferranti had previously encouraged residents to report sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to county authorities, a move seen by some as an effort to subvert federal immigration enforcement.
Hurtt argued that Arlington County, along with other jurisdictions in Northern Virginia, has consistently adopted policies that oppose federal immigration crackdowns, describing the local government as being "completely run by far-left activists." He contrasted the county's funding priorities, such as this grant program, with what he described as underfunded essential services that voters are asked to support through bond measures. "Every single election cycle, the Arlington County board puts hundreds of millions of dollars on the ballot in the form of bond issues for basic services — school improvements, road construction, and other projects that they deem necessary," Hurtt said. "What that tells voters is that they aren't prioritizing those projects... but they're prioritizing these far-left projects like a slush fund for illegal aliens."