Joshua Davis & Whitney K. Taylor Truthout/TheAppeal
n the months leading up to the 2026 midterm elections, congressional Republicans and federal prosecutors have targeted dozens of local officials in cities and counties across the country that have adopted some sanctuary policies. The investigations have increasingly focused on prosecutors and law enforcement officers, many of whom have publicly announced plans to go after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who commit crimes in their jurisdictions or refuse demands to cooperate with federal immigration policing.
In total, 65 officials in 16 states have been targeted since January, according to a review of documents released by the House Judiciary Committee and the Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as interviews with senior officials who have direct knowledge of individual investigations. The House Judiciary Committee has issued subpoenas and other demands for testimony, documents, and records to more than 40 officials, 15 of them local prosecutors. Alongside that, the DOJ has initiated investigations into 50 local or state officials since 2025, including five involving local prosecutors. In all, 17 local prosecutors have been swept up in House Judiciary or DOJ investigations and lawsuits related to immigration policies.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan said in a recent report that “Democrats’ open-borders policies at the federal level and sanctuary policies at the state and local level allow millions of illegal aliens to pour into the country and ensure that criminal aliens, after encountered by local law enforcement, are released back into American communities,” echoing language the committee has commonly used in its investigations.
Many experts describe these investigations as unprecedented, and view the move as retaliation against local officials who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents or threaten legal action against ICE officers.
“These [prosecutors] are being intentionally intimidated by congressional and federal authorities,” said Mona Sahaf, the director of the Reshaping Prosecution initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice. “The use of [the] DOJ to target perceived political opponents is new. It’s busting norms, and it’s highly dangerous.”
The targeting of local prosecutors appears to be a matter of policy in the second Trump administration. “Sanctuary Jurisdictions Directives” issued by the attorney general’s office on February 5, 2025, held that the DOJ Civil Rights Division should “identify state and local laws, policies, and practices that facilitate violations of federal immigration laws or impede lawful federal immigration operations,” and “where appropriate, take legal action to challenge such laws, policies, or practices.”
The DOJ, in a June 18 press release announcing an investigation into local officials in Philadelphia — including District Attorney Larry Krasner — concerning a policy prohibiting federal agents from wearing masks, said that its “series of lawsuits brought by the Civil Division” targeted “illegal policies designed to thwart federal law enforcement across the country.”
Rebecca Roiphe, the Joseph Solomon Distinguished Professor of Law at New York Law School, said the investigations into local prosecutors represented “a wholesale abandonment” of the principle of separation between the DOJ and the political branches of government. “This administration has pretty openly suggested that it is normal and appropriate and even laudable for the political branches to have some degree of control over the Department of Justice,” she said.
Referring to the DOJ investigations, Roiphe said, “The bottom line is that these federal prosecutions can end up threatening local prosecutors to fall in line with federal priorities, and that’s illegitimate in our system.”
These overlapping investigations, reports, and the DOJ directives follow the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 threat to “initiate legal action against” prosecutors who refuse to adhere to the priorities of the Trump administration. For many of the targeted prosecutors, the political influence has become impossible to ignore.
Among the targeted is Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, the top prosecutor in Arlington, Virginia, who drew the ire of Representative Jordan’s committee on multiple occasions, including when she declined to charge an activist who handed out flyers containing the home address of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, citing concerns over First Amendment-protected free speech.
In a July 1 letter to Dehghani-Tafti, Jordan described Dehghani-Tafti’s decision not to charge as “politically-motivated actions in a case involving a far-left agitator’s disturbing campaign to threaten, harass, and dox a senior White House official and his family” and accused her office of having “sanctuary policies that prioritize illegal and criminal aliens over American citizens.”
Dehghani-Tafti, who characterized the House Judiciary actions as “pathetic,” denies any wrongdoing and suggests that these investigations are the result of her political opponents’ inability to defeat her electorally.
“They can’t beat us at the polls, and so they’re being undemocratic about it and trying to undermine the voters,” she told Truthout.
In total, Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee have issued three letters and a subpoena to Dehghani-Tafti, in addition to writing an interim report on her in September, which was largely based on a July closed-door deposition. Following the report, the DOJ Civil Rights Division informed Dehghani-Tafti that she was under investigation following a referral from the House Judiciary, according to a senior official with direct knowledge of the investigation.
“None of this is normal,” Dehghani-Tafti said. “What they’re doing is taking mechanisms that are designed to uphold the rule of law and perverting them. And that is not normal, except for authoritarians.”
Dehghani-Tafti was not the only Northern Virginia prosecutor to be on the receiving end of both House Judiciary and DOJ investigations. The top prosecutor for Fairfax County, Virginia, Steve Descano, similarly received three letters and a subpoena, and was the subject of an interim report from Jordan’s committee. The report, “Fairfax County, Virginia: The Dangerous Consequences of Sanctuary Policies,” claims that a 2019 campaign promise to make “charging and plea decisions that limit or avoid immigration consequences” is discriminatory and violates federal law. The report goes on to accuse Descano’s office of “efforts to erase national borders and undermine immigration enforcement.”
Descano declined to comment for this story, citing the ongoing investigations. His chief of staff, Laura Birnbaum, directed Truthout to prior official statements issued by his office, including an October 20 response to the House Judiciary report. “This ‘report’ is nothing more than recycled Republican talking points put out weeks before the midterm elections as a desperate attempt to distract from widely anticipated Republican losses,” wrote Birnbaum.
Responding to the DOJ investigation, Descano’s office released a statement in May that accused the Trump administration “of misusing the Justice Department to launch partisan attacks.”
Both Dehghani-Tafti and Descano belong to a small coalition of prosecutors from cities across the U.S. that declared an intention to prosecute federal agents who commit crimes in their cities. The alliance — the Fight Against Federal Overreach — which intentionally takes its name from the slang acronym FAFO, formed in January in part as a response to the deadly ICE shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis that same month. Less than a year later, nearly half of the group’s founding members have found themselves under investigation by the DOJ.
“No other administration has ever done things like this,”said Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who has been a target of DOJ investigators.
Moriarty, whose jurisdiction includes Minneapolis, made national headlines in January when she announced a state-level investigation into the shooting of Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Just days later, the DOJ subpoenaed four Minnesota officials, including Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, as part of an investigation into whether they impeded federal immigration agents during “Operation Metro Surge.” News reports initially incorrectly named Moriarty among the officials who received a subpoena, though it was later revealed that she did not receive one. Moriarty told Truthout she believes that her name was released intentionally by government officials to intimidate her.
Viewed in isolation, these actions may appear to be singular responses during an exceptional political moment, but taken together, the data suggest a wider attempt to punish officials who try to thwart federal immigration policies.
“The story is there — if you speak up and work to hold police accountable, we will come after you,” said Sahaf, referring to the House Judiciary and DOJ investigations. Sahaf, a former DOJ trial attorney, warned that should local prosecutors fear becoming a political target for investigating federal agents and police, “we’ll have no one … to deter this kind of conduct from happening again.”
Clarissa Delgado contributed additional reporting for this article.
This article originally appeared at Truthout, in partnership with The Appeal, and is republished here to bring this reporting to ScheerPost readers. Support independent journalism by visiting both outlets.
Joshua Davis is a journalist, filmmaker, and associate professor of journalism at San Francisco State University. His documentary projects include Charlottesville: Race and Terror for VICE News and Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt for NPR. He holds an M.A. in journalism and mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and served two terms on the board of directors of the National Press Photographers Association.
Whitney K. Taylor is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on experiments in law and justice, including the recognition of new constitutional rights, access to justice, and approaches to criminal prosecution. She holds a Ph.D. in government from Cornell University.
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