The revelation marks a new development in the dispute between ICE and Fairfax County, which have laid out dueling accounts explaining their previous encounters with Abdul Jalloh, a foreign national from West Africa charged with the murder of Virginia mother Stephanie Minter.
Minter was found fatally stabbed at a Fairfax County bus stop last month. Jalloh, the primary murder suspect, is a serial stabber who was let out of the county jail dozens of times since he illegally entered the United States in 2012, according to immigration authorities, and was resettled in the Fairfax County area.
In the weeks following Minter’s Feb. 23 murder, ICE and the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the county’s only jail, have butted heads over which agency is responsible for allowing Jalloh to roam the streets in the first place, as both had him in their custody at some point in the past decade.
ICE has pinned Minter’s stabbing death squarely on Fairfax County officials, who have imposed sanctuary policies that restrict police from cooperating with federal agents for deportation purposes.
FCSO, meanwhile, maintains that it was ICE that let Jalloh out of federal custody in 2018 after local law enforcement fulfilled a continued detention request, called an immigration detainer, on behalf of ICE.
Settling the detainer dispute
The Washington Examiner has learned that, most recently, ICE issued a detainer against Jalloh in 2023.
ICE said that its Washington field office filed a Form I-247A, known as a notice of action, with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center on Feb. 9, 2023.
The document, which served as the detainer, notified FCSO officials that immigration officers intended to assume custody of Jalloh and asked that they hold him up to 48 hours past his scheduled release date until ICE could arrive at the county jail. At the time, Jalloh was in jail on felony assault and theft charges.
However, that detention request was not honored, and Jalloh was set free again, ICE told the Washington Examiner.
In response to a Washington Examiner inquiry, FCSO’s director of communications described the 2023 detainer as an “informal request.”
“In 2023, an informal request was filed against Mr. Jalloh,” the FCSO spokeswoman said. “However, he was ultimately ordered to be transferred to another facility as a bed-to-bed transfer. He was later released from that other facility.”
When pressed about which facility Jalloh was transferred to and whether it was out of county, FCSO said it had sent him to a medical center but declined to name the receiving institution, citing nondisclosure regulations.
“Multiple federal and state privacy laws prevent us from divulging where he was taken,” FCSO told the Washington Examiner.
ICE detainers remain valid during inmate transfers and should follow detainees to whichever facility receives them, explained Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The sending facilities are generally responsible for forwarding detention requests along to ensure that a detainer remains in an inmate’s file. Otherwise, she said, “ICE cannot possibly know if or when that transfer happens unless the jail tells them.”
“Regarding the 2023 release, if the jail were cooperating with ICE, they would have transferred the detainer to the other facility that Jalloh was transferred to,” Vaughan told the Washington Examiner.
Fairfax County insists it has never declined an ICE detainer
According to CIS statistics on which sanctuary strongholds have released the most criminally charged illegal immigrants from pretrial detention, Fairfax County had the nation’s third-highest release volume.
In 2025, CIS ranked the northern Virginia suburb No. 3 nationally among jurisdictions across the country, including many large U.S. cities, that routinely refused to accommodate ICE detention requests over a two-year period.
CIS reported that Fairfax County freed more than a thousand deportable illegal immigrants in direct defiance of over 1,150 detainers lodged with local officials between October 2022 and February 2025.
FCSO, however, denied that it has ever outright rejected an immigration detainer and insisted that it always informs ICE about suspected illegal immigrants that the county jail comes across.
“The Sheriff’s Office never declines an ICE detainer,” an agency representative told the Washington Examiner. “ICE is notified every time an undocumented person is booked into the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. It is ICE’s duty to execute requests and detainers by responding to the location of the person to be arrested. We have never stopped ICE from doing so.”
In response, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the county is not truly honoring detainers simply by “informally” alerting ICE to an illegal immigrant’s impending release through the state’s reporting portal.
Sheriffs in Virginia are required under procedural code to determine the residency status of individuals taken into custody and share the results of “any immigration alien query” with the statewide inmate tracking system. During the booking process, inmate fingerprints are automatically entered into this database, accessible by all local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE.
“An ‘informal’ notification of a detainee’s release is not ‘honoring a detainer.’ Does this mean Fairfax County is committing to a controlled transfer in full cooperation with ICE?” the DHS spokesperson said in a statement sent to the Washington Examiner.
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“For an arrest detainer to be honored, local authorities must call ICE and transfer the illegal alien into our custody in a controlled setting,” the spokesperson continued. “If they don’t call ICE and participate in a controlled transfer, they are not honoring the detainer and are choosing to release this criminal illegal alien from jail back into our communities.”
Vaughan agreed that “decline” in this case means a refusal to hold subjects until ICE can collect them or sufficiently notify ICE. “It does ICE no good if the jail simply tells them every time they think they booked an illegal alien into the jail,” she said.
“Yes, ICE’s duty is to be there at the time of release,” Vaughan added, “but they need the jail to tell them when that will be. Saying they never stopped ICE from doing that is misleading and beside the point. This is like a person complaining that a taxi driver never showed up when the person never called them to arrange the ride to begin with.”
In 2018, FCSO terminated an Intergovernmental Service Agreement it had with ICE. A letter from Sheriff Stacey Kincaid addressed to ICE’s Washington branch announced that FSCO would no longer “honor” any of the agency’s administrative detention requests unless it is accompanied by a judicially signed criminal warrant.
The sheriff caveated, “We will continue to cooperate in matters pursuant to Code of Virginia § 53.1-220.2,” a state statute that allows jail directors to voluntarily turn over, upon request, an illegal immigrant to ICE up to five days prior to the inmate’s anticipated release time.
What happened in 2018 when Jalloh was released from federal custody?
Local media coverage of the case has, so far, mainly focused on Jalloh’s even earlier release from federal custody, an interaction that occurred more than four years before the 2023 run-in.
In 2018, FCSO received an ICE detention request regarding Jalloh, and ICE accordingly took Jalloh into custody directly from the Fairfax County jail on Nov. 27 of that year.
“How he was able to leave ICE custody to return to the community can only be answered by ICE,” a FCSO spokesperson said.
Fairfax County officials have since focused on Jalloh’s 2018 release in recent press interviews, faulting ICE for how he ended up back in Virginia. The case has drawn national attention against the backdrop of a broader political fight over Democrats’ opposition to deporting illegal immigrants.
“Why was ICE not successful in dealing with an individual who was not here legally, had committed egregious crimes in our community? That’s one intersection that jumps out at me,” Jeff McKay, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, told WJLA-TV.
DHS verified that ICE detained Jalloh on Nov. 27, 2018, and he remained in federal custody for 702 days, or roughly two years. ICE, however, was legally required to release him following a judge’s ruling that he could not be returned to his home country, Sierra Leone.
“ICE can only detain illegals for the purpose of removal,” a DHS spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “Without third country removals, there was no possibility for this criminal to be removed or further detained.”
Jalloh was ultimately issued a final order of removal, stipulating that he could be deported anywhere other than his country of origin, but the deportation process was complicated by third-country removal restrictions.
“This case illustrates the importance of third-country removals to public safety,” the DHS spokesperson said.
Jalloh went on to commit more crimes, including stabbings
Despite the ICE detainer lodged against him in 2023, Jalloh was roaming freely soon after and went on to commit a string of stabbings over the following three years, according to police records obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Jalloh has a lengthy history of stabbing residents across Fairfax County, his offender sheet shows.
In fact, Jalloh was detained in February 2023, the arrest that triggered the 2023 detainer, for stabbing an elderly man and stealing his phone. Jalloh was subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison, with five of those years suspended.
Less than a month before that stabbing incident, Jalloh had allegedly stabbed a separate victim at a McDonald’s location on Jan. 18, 2023, but the malicious wounding charges were dropped by county prosecutors.
On April 14, 2024, Jalloh allegedly stabbed a homeless person in the head while he was sleeping at a bus stop shelter and robbed a female victim in another attack that same day. Fairfax County prosecutors, again, abandoned both cases.
While out on probation for the February 2023 stabbing conviction, Jalloh allegedly stabbed a homeless man on May 4, 2025. Around this time, Jalloh was living in transitional housing supplied by Opportunities, Alternatives, & Resources, a restorative justice organization that partners with Fairfax County to provide “alternative sentencing” and post-release support services.
Jalloh was granted bond on July 31, 2025, and weeks later, he allegedly assaulted another man, an older victim, by stomping his head into the ground in the parking lot of a shopping center on Aug. 21, 2025.
After serving time for the probation violation, Jalloh was released from the county jail on Nov. 14, 2025.
An internal notification alerted police about Jalloh’s Nov. 14 release, advising patrol units that he is known to carry a knife. “Please use caution if you come in contact with him,” the alert said.
Prosecutorial catch and release
Email exchanges show that the Fairfax County Police Department repeatedly warned the office of Fairfax County prosecutor Steve Descano about Jalloh in the months leading up to Minter’s murder, questioning in November why he was released “so soon” and if his previously suspended sentence can be reinstated.
“Mr. Jalloh is one of the repeat (and violent) felony offenders I expressed concern about when we met,” Major Jeffrey Mauro wrote in one Nov. 15 message to Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Jenna Sands, adding that “his behavior appears to be escalating and becoming more violent and explosive.”
In the email, the police major said, “It is not a question of if, but rather when” Jalloh will harm someone else.
“I handled his malicious wounding charges personally,” Sands answered, offering to discuss the 2023 case over the phone.
The email thread shows they coordinated a call, but it appears the prosecutors did not ultimately secure the suspended sentence. It is unclear if they pursued the suspended prison time as requested.
Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano, a George Soros-backed Democrat, touts a lenient policy for prosecuting illegal immigrants.
“Steve’s office will take immigration consequences into account when making charging and plea decisions,” Descano’s campaign website says. “Although prosecutors typically refer to immigration consequences as ‘collateral consequences,’ avoiding the unnecessary destruction of families and communities will be a top priority for Steve as Commonwealth’s Attorney. Wherever possible, Steve will make charging and plea decisions that limit or avoid immigration consequences.”
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Fairfax County police had also flagged Jalloh as a public safety threat to county prosecutors back in May, when he was arrested on allegations of stabbing a homeless man.
On May 5, 2025, FCPD Captain James Curry sent a bond alert to several prosecutors in Descano’s office, including Sands, asking them to argue in court that he remain behind bars at the county detention center.
“This individual has a long history of stabbing community members and is currently on probation for doing that very thing,” an attached document said. “He has shown a blatant disregard for human life and is a danger to the community.”
A spokeswoman for Descano’s office said that the correspondence shows that county prosecutors “shared police concerns” regarding Jalloh’s likelihood of reoffending.
“These emails support what I have previously shared about this case,” Descano spokeswoman Laura Birnbaum told the Washington Examiner, “which is that our office was aware of Jalloh’s criminal history and shared police concerns about potential future dangerousness — that is why our Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney personally handled these cases.”
Emails show that Sands questioned whether police looked at Jalloh for an unrelated stabbing homicide in June. “We had the same thoughts; he is still incarcerated,” Curry, of FCPD’s criminal investigations division, responded.
Birnbaum added that prosecutors will often “explore many different pathways to successful prosecution, but at the end of the day our decisions are constrained by what testimony is available and what is legally permissible and practicable in Fairfax courts.”
In an email reply to the May 5 bond alert, FCPD Assistant Chief Brooke Wright acknowledged that officials struggled to get criminal charges to stick against Jalloh because the homeless people he attacked tended not to come to court.
“Jenna and I had a specific conversation regarding them prosecuting without a victim in court for the stabbing, given the circumstances, and she was on board with a victimless prosecution,” Wright wrote.
Jalloh is currently being held without bond at FCADC on second-degree murder charges.
ICE is asking Fairfax County not to release Jalloh, calling Minter’s stabbing death “another preventable murder of an American citizen” at the hands of an illegal immigrant.
FCSO noted that, other than the 2018 and 2023 detention requests, ICE had not submitted any other detainers or warrants in connection with Jalloh’s numerous arrests over the years.
