by Jonathan Krall
These are unusual times. While we continue to focus on local Alexandria politics, new volunteers are coming to us with national concerns that we share ourselves. With students and immigrants being “disappeared” to Louisiana or El Salvador, it is tempting to disconnect, to imagine that these actions are happening “somewhere else.” For residents or Northern Virginia, this week’s Amicus podcast shows us otherwise. Simon Sandoval Moshenberg, who is interviewed, comes from Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC), right here in Northern Virginia (while LAJC is cited in the podcast, Mr. Moshenberg is currently with Murray Osorio PLLC). His client, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, one of the disappeared, is a legal resident of nearby Maryland. This is not happening far away. This is right here, right now.
Act Today: 1. Visit our events page, click “Community Voices Update,” attend a rally, training, or social gathering. 2. Download, print, and distribute our Community Voices Update flyer.
Simon’s client, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an asylum-seeker who was granted a stay from deportation in 2019, was a sheet-metal worker in Maryland. He was picked up by ICE for reasons that are still not clear, apparently as a result of an “administrative error,” and his presence in one of the many notoriously unreliable police “gang databases.” Last month, in defiance of a judge’s explicit order, three planes took people, mostly Venezuelans, to a dangerous prison in El Salvador. Mr. Abrego Garcia was on the third plane. The Amicus podcast raises a simple question: “Will the Trump administration follow a federal judge’s orders and bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home?”
According to our friends in LAJC, a viral video showing ICE agents smashing a car window to arrest a man has sparked significant fear here in Northern Virginia. In reaction, many people are staying home as much as possible, even skipping LAJC’s normally-crowded community information events.
We in Grassroots Alexandria have worked with LAJC in the past and expect to do so in the future. LAJC, along with Tenants and Workers United (TWU), produced the 2023 ICE in Alexandria fact sheet that is posted on our website. This year, as TWU holds meetings with each branch of our local government (city council members, the police chief, the sheriff, the school superintendent), Grassroots Alexandria volunteers attend and support. As in 2017, the central concern is the increasingly-lawless ICE deportation machine and the steps that we in Alexandria can take to protect friends, neighbors, workers, parents, children, and students. This work is supported by LAJC and ACLU lawyers. Their work guides our work.
As LAJC and their many allies work to resolve these frightening legal issues, our Community Voices project team is doing its best to get people to highly visible pro-democracy rallies. You can help. Similar to 2017, when White nationalism reared its ugly head in our community, it is not always easy to see the very real connections between far-right fantasies of a “white ethno-state” (Richard Spencer, 2016) or a “monarchy” (Curtis Yarvin, 2025) and local concerns about ICE deportations or transparency in policing.
As in 2017, our aim is maximum visibility. Fascists are a vocal minority that might be mistaken for a majority. If that happens, politicians might vote to suspend civil liberties or otherwise vote for authoritarian laws, thinking that is what the people want. We The People (that’s you, me, our friends, our neighbors) can’t let that happen. The stakes are too high. The local impact of the current, court-defying administration–jobs lost and people disappeared–is unmistakable.
Here in the DC area, the pro-democracy rallies have been positive, peaceful, and uplifting. If enough of us participate, we believe that the rule of law, especially due process for all of us, can be restored quickly. Restoring ‘public goods,’ such as cancer research or humanitarian aid, might take longer.
The opportunity to participate is right here, right now. You, too, can be a voice for your community.