Congressman Morgan Griffith Thinks He Can Legislate by Using a Google Search

Feb

2026

Dispatch RELEASE

Congressman Morgan Griffith Thinks He Can Legislate by Using a Google Search

On February 5, 2026, Morgan Griffith sent a letter to Governor Abigail Spanberger along with four of his Republican House colleagues. He proudly posted this letter on his Facebook page for all to see. In this letter, he and his Republican colleagues asked Governor Spanberger to reinstate Governor Youngkin’s Executive Order 47. Section 287(g) of this order was an agreement that required Virginia state police and local law enforcement to enter into agreements with ICE. It allowed them to be deputized by ICE to assist in immigration. It allowed ICE to use multiple jails, prisons and processing facilities in Virginia for ICE detainees. Youngkin’s order also required the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security to reach out to every sheriff or director over a jail in Virginia to make sure they would fully cooperate with ICE. Good riddance Governor Glen Younkin!

On day one of Governor Spanberger’s term, she signed Executive Directive One to rescind Governor Youngkin’s order. The statement on her website is as follows:

“This executive order rescinds Executive Order 47, which requires and encourages state and local law enforcement to divert their limited resources for use in enforcing federal civil immigration laws. Ensuring public safety in Virginia requires state and local law enforcement to be focused on their core responsibilities of investigating and deterring criminal activity, staffing jails, and community engagement.”

Spanberger commented, “Taking Virginia law enforcement state agency personnel and basically giving them over to ICE is something that ends today. Sadly, the bad tactics, the bad training, the bad vetting that we have seen or witnessed or perceive in places like Minnesota that is degrading trust in law enforcement. I want to draw a very clear line in the sand and say I have strong trust in the law enforcement agencies in Virginia.” Governor Spanberger also stated that state and local law enforcement should still work with federal law enforcement when there is a “judicial warrant.”

It sounds like Governor Spanberger doesn’t want residents in Virginia taken to detention facilities for civil immigration matters. It seems she doesn’t want Virginians to lose their 4^th amendment rights by having ICE enter their homes without a warrant. It seems she wants our hardworking state and local law enforcement to be concerned with actual criminal activity. And I think it’s accurate for me to say, she doesn’t want law abiding Virginians killed in the streets by ICE.

But back to Congressman Morgan Griffith and his four coworkers. The letter they sent to Governor Spanberger state there are 361,000 illegal residents in Virginia, many of these as a result of the Biden Harris administration. The letter states these illegal residents are a threat to Virginia’s safety and a drain on social services. They used the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute as their source, posted at the bottom of the letter. Little did they know a savvy reporter by the name of Chris Graham at the Augusta Free Press checked this source.

Graham points out that the five Virginia Republican Congressman used Migration Policy Institute as their reference because a quick Google search shows the highest number of undocumented Virginia residents, 361,000 comes from that site. What Morgan Griffith and the rest of the group failed to do was actually read the Migration Policy Institute’s report. It shows only 82,000 of these undocumented people in Virginia (a mere 23%) have been here less than 5 years. The remaining 279,000 (or 77%) have been in Virginia for at least 5 years. And 124,000 of those undocumented people (more than a third) have been in Virginia over 20 years. So much for the Biden-Harris surge.

Graham also highlights other Migration Policy Institute (MPI) data regarding Virginia’s undocumented which Morgan conveniently ignores. There is only a 4% unemployment rate among the undocumented, so the vast majority are contributing members of our local economies. In fact, nearly a fifth (18%) have college degrees and almost three out of five (58%) have incomes that are at 200% of the federal poverty level or higher.

More than that, these people are not criminals or gang members like the Trump administration would have you believe. Most of the undocumented people in Virginia are part of the fabric of our communities. In fact, according to MPI, nearly a fifth (17%) are married to US citizens; a third (33%) are homeowners; and almost three fifths (58%) are aged 35 years or older.

MPI points out that “Immigrants in the United States commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.-born population. And though a 2021 Justice Department study points out prosecutions of immigrants increased between 1990 and 2018, nearly 90 percent were for violations of immigration-related laws. Notably, U.S.-born citizens were ten times more likely than immigrants to be incarcerated for committing weapons-related offenses, five times more likely for violent offenses, more than twice as likely for property crimes, and nearly twice as likely for drug offenses.”

Does Morgan Griffith think he can legislate for the 9^th District by doing a quick Google search? Does he really think our shrinking middle class here in the 9^th is due to immigrant crimes and Medicaid abuse and not the millionaires and billionaires taking everything for themselves? Or is he nearly bowing down to Donald Trump? We need a congressman with the intelligence to recognize the real problem and the courage speak out to power that keeps those boots on our middle-class necks. Let’s fire Morgan Griffith. Adam Murphy for Congress.

Yours, Rosemary Rox

Congressman Morgan Griffith Thinks He Can Legislate by Using a Google Search

Dispatch RELEASE — February 15th, 2025 — Rosemary Rox