FIRST ON FOX: Fairfax County officials are in the hot seat after the Trump Department of Homeland Security says the county’s sanctuary policies allowed an illegal alien to walk free despite having been arrested ten times and having 19 criminal charges, including for malicious shooting and unlawful wounding.

The top Fairfax County official is disputing DHS’ characterization of it as a sanctuary county. However, Salvadoran national Jorge Armando Melendez-Gonzalez, 27, was arrested 10 times and has been charged with 19 different crimes in just over seven years, between March 19, 2018, and July 18, 2025, according to DHS.

He was finally arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Oct. 24 after DHS said officials at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center declined to honor an immigration detainer it lodged against him on July 18.

The July detainer was not the first time Fairfax County ignored an ICE request to hold Melendez-Gonzalez. ICE also lodged a detainer against him in 2023. According to DHS, “Fairfax County officials refused to honor the immigration detainer and released this dangerous criminal alien back into the community.”

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The agency said Melendez-Gonzalez entered the U.S. illegally in June 2015. An immigration judge ordered his removal from the country just over a year later in October 2016.

Despite this, Melendez-Gonzalez stayed in the country for just over ten years, racking up a long list of offenses in Virginia. He has arrests for three counts of malicious shooting, unlawful wounding, use of a firearm in commission of a felony, assault and battery, assault on a family member, grand larceny, trespassing, possessing a false government identification, public intoxication, disturbing the peace and making a false statement to a law enforcement officer.

He has two felony convictions for unlawful wounding stemming from a 2023 shooting, which carry sentences of three years in confinement. However, his sentence was reduced to a year.

According to a statement from the Fairfax County Police Department, detectives arrested Melendez-Gonzalez in August 2023 in a shooting that injured three men outside a business in Falls Church, Virginia.

Fox News Digital reached out to Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano, a Democrat, for the reason for Melendez-Gonzalez’s sentence being suspended. A spokesperson for the commonwealth’s attorney’s office declined to comment, referring Fox News Digital to the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office, which, the spokesperson said, “is responsible for handling ICE detainers.”

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Allyson Conroy, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, which runs the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, told Fox News Digital, “We did not have a judicial warrant on file from ICE for Jorge Armando Melendez-Gonzalez for either date, Aug. 28, 2023, nor for July 18 of this year.”

Conroy said “the sheriff’s office could not maintain custody over Mr. Melendez-Gonzalez.”

Regarding the suspension of Melendez-Gonalez’s sentence, Conroy said that decision “is in the discretion of the judge or the assigned commonwealth’s attorney. You should contact those individuals for further information.”

Fox News Digital also reached out to representatives for Fairfax County regarding the Fairfax County Circuit Court’s decision but did not immediately receive a response.

Fairfax County Chairman Jeffrey McKay, also a Democrat, responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, saying, “Fairfax County, through the Board of Supervisors, does not control or make decisions regarding ICE detainers or judicial sentencing; those responsibilities fall to the sheriff and the courts, respectively.”

He said Fairfax County “does not consider itself a sanctuary jurisdiction and continues to follow all applicable federal and state laws.”

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DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, however, placed the blame squarely on the county’s sanctuary policies.

“These sanctuary policies make Virginians less safe,” McLaughlin told Fox News Digital.

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“Fairfax County refused to honor two ICE arrest detainers and chose to release this criminal back onto Virginia’s streets. Virginia sanctuary politicians protected this criminal illegal alien and allowed him to terrorize American citizens,” she added.

“Thanks to the brave men and women of ICE law enforcement, this serial violent criminal with 10 previous arrests is now off of Virginia’s streets.”

Erika Kirk walked onto the stage at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) Wednesday night to a packed house for her first Turning Point USA campus appearance since the murder of her husband, Charlie Kirk.

“It’s hard not to cry after watching,” she said of the video tribute that played before she took the microphone. “I haven’t seen that… that video since that day happened.”

“Being on campus right now for me is a spiritual reclaiming of territory,” she said. “There is a lot of symbolism in today. It’s Wednesday, seven weeks. And the more that I am coming to grips with the permanency of this nightmare, the more that I am starting to realize and witness that the enemy, he doesn’t want you.”

“He wants your territory. He wants your influence. And I could just hear Charlie in my heart. I could just hear him say, ‘Go reclaim that territory, babe. Go — the battles that God’s love conquers.’ And that’s why I’m here today,” she added.

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Erika thanked the students who filled the arena, many wearing “Freedom” T-shirts like the one she wore at the podium. “You have no idea how helpful it is to have all of you in my life, because you help me feel even more deeply connected to my husband,” she told them.

She recalled how Charlie made a point at every Turning Point USA event to stop and talk with student leaders. “He would ask you what your name is, what you’re studying, what issues are going on on campus,” she said. “He wanted you to know he was investing in you: into your chapter, into your school. That was a pulse point for him.”

“Earn your voice,” she urged. “You are the courageous generation. That’s what you are. All of you, Gen Z, you are the courageous generation. Make him proud.”

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“I lost my friend. I lost my best friend,” she said. “If you’re nervous about standing up for the truth, the murder of my husband puts into perspective all those fears. My husband never went with the flow. He believed the harder path was always the right one, because comfort doesn’t change the world.”

She shared for the first time with the audience present that for weeks after Charlie’s murder she avoided their bedroom at home.

“It took me a while to even just make it back into our bedroom,” she said. “I used to sprint from the opening door into the bathroom and sprint out. I was not ready to walk into our bedroom yet, and when I was finally able to sleep in our bed for the first time, I slept on his side of the bed.”

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From that spot, she said, she finally saw what Charlie saw every morning, the framed words on the wall: “They will be known by the boldness of their faith.”

“He saw that every single morning he woke up,” Erika said. “I didn’t, because I was on the other side, facing the window. But from his side, that’s what he saw first.”

On his desk, she added, were three questions Charlie had written out and asked himself each day: “What is something I can do for someone today? What is something I can do to add value to the world today? How can I honor God today?”

“Those were his action points for courage,” Erika said. “Ask yourself those questions every day, and I promise you, you will get courage. What death amplifies even more is that you only get one life. So live like it matters.”

“Love your family fearlessly. Love your spouse fearlessly. Love this country,” she said. “Defend her and serve our God. And don’t think that it’s someone else’s role to do it. You do it. You do it.” The audience broke into applause.

“This moment can either be your breaking point or your wake-up call,” she said. “Essentially, your turning point.”

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She then introduced Vice President JD Vance, a friend of her late husband, calling him someone who “understands the fight that we’re up against and can articulate that in a way that transcends race and background.”

“There will never be another Charlie,” she said, “but I know he’d be proud to see us here tonight.”

A group of news outlets has sued Tennessee prison officials, claiming the state’s execution rules block journalists from fully witnessing lethal injections and conceal key moments from public scrutiny. 

Under current procedures, reporters are only allowed to observe once the condemned inmate is already strapped to the gurney. 

In their filing, the outlets argue the state’s protocol violates “the public and press’s statutory and constitutional rights to witness the entirety of executions,” saying Tennesseans deserve transparency from the moment an inmate enters the chamber until the official pronouncement of death. 

The plaintiffs are seeking a judgment declaring the protocols unconstitutional and an injunction allowing reporters to see the full execution process. 

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The filing claims that the blackout “limits the public’s ability to receive information from independent observers” – effectively leaving executions shielded from outside scrutiny. 

The defendants are Kenneth Nelsen, warden of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville – which houses Tennessee’s execution chamber – and Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction.

Reporters are kept behind blinds until the inmate is restrained and connected to IV lines. The exact timing of when lethal drugs are administered remains unknown, as the medical team operates from a separate room. 

Once the inmate is pronounced dead, the warden announces on the intercom system that the sentence was carried out, and witnesses are instructed to leave.

The lawsuit argues that the First Amendment of both the U.S. Constitution and Tennessee Constitution guarantee the public’s right to see capital punishment carried out in full view – not behind partial secrecy. Tennessee law requires that certain witnesses – including seven members of the media – be present. 

The plaintiffs cited the August execution of Byron Black, convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two young daughters in the 1980s. During Black’s execution, curtains in the witness room were only open for 10 minutes.

According to Black’s attorney, medical personnel had trouble finding veins in his arms, resulting in visible blood pooling on his right side. His attorney said it took 10 minutes just to attach the IV tubes. 

Black reportedly told witnesses he was “hurting so bad” during his lethal injection.

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“Make no mistake, we all saw with our own eyes that the pentobarbital did not work like the State’s expert testified that it would,” attorney Kelley Henry said in a statement at the time. “Mr. Black suffered.”

The lawsuit cites the state’s internal execution log and says media witnesses only saw fragments of the procedure – when blinds opened, when Black gave his final words, and when the view was cut off again. 

The closed-circuit camera, the filing notes, is reserved for the execution team, not the press. 

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As a result, the lawsuit contends, reporters “had no access to that stage of the proceeding to independently report on it, leaving the public with no firsthand account from a neutral observer.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.