VA Sanctuary Sheriff To President Trump: Immigration Enforcement is the ‘Responsibility of Federal Agencies"

Written by: Sam Orlando

AUGUSTA COUNTY, VIRGINIA - In a move that may have just rewritten his political obituary—or unintentionally launched a new chapter—Augusta County Sheriff Donald Smith issued a statement this week that sounds less like something out of the MAGA playbook and more like a press release from the ACLU.

Yes, that Sheriff Smith. The one whose past includes shielding a convicted human trafficker and lying to a federal grand jury.

Now, he’s standing toe-to-toe with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement—and doing it using the exact language that got cities like San Francisco and Chicago labeled “sanctuary jurisdictions.”

“The Augusta County Sheriff’s Office fully intends to cooperate with federal agencies when criminal warrants related to immigration are issued,” Smith wrote. “The enforcement of immigration law is the responsibility of federal agencies.”

Read between those lines: We don’t honor ICE detainers. We don’t hold people without warrants. That’s not our job.

And in Trump World, that’s heresy.

DHS vs. the Accidental Progressive

Sheriff Smith’s statement came in response to the Department of Homeland Security’s new list of over 500 localities accused of obstructing federal immigration enforcement. Twenty of them are in Virginia, including Augusta County.

At first glance, the statement reads like damage control: calm, measured, vague. But to anyone fluent in the coded language of immigration politics, it’s a bombshell.

Because DHS doesn’t want sheriffs who “intend to cooperate when legally required.” DHS—and especially this Trump-aligned version of it—wants sheriffs who enthusiastically enforce administrative ICE detainers, notify agents of pending releases, and hold individuals beyond their legal release dates without judicial warrants.

Smith isn’t saying that. He’s saying the opposite.

Which means either he’s had a legal and moral awakening… or he’s just dared the federal government to call his bluff.

Either way, he now sounds more like a progressive reformer than a Trump loyalist.

Sheriff Smith: Lawman or Legalist?

Of course, we’re not dealing with a clean record here.

Smith’s time as sheriff is marred by his ties to Felix Chujoy, a Peruvian national who ran a human trafficking operation out of a Harrisonburg restaurant. When Chujoy fled federal prosecution, he called Smith directly. Smith later lied about that contact to federal agents and to a grand jury. A judge called him “not credible.”

And yet—here we are.

In 2025, with the Trump machine roaring back to life and DHS threatening jurisdictions that defy its will, it’s a sheriff from rural Virginia who just said: not our job, not our role, not how we do law enforcement.

Was it a principled stand? A legally cautious one? Or simply a bureaucratic side-step by a man used to dodging deeper scrutiny?

Maybe all three.

A Rural Sheriff Channels Big-City Resistance

It’s hard to overstate how unusual this is. This isn’t Portland. This isn’t New York. This is Augusta County—a red-leaning, law-and-order stronghold where immigrant rights activists don’t exactly line the courthouse steps.

But Sheriff Smith’s response checks every box of modern sanctuary logic:

• Federal enforcement is not our job.

• We comply with court orders, not administrative requests.

• Public safety, not political theater, guides our work.

Whether he intended it or not, Sheriff Smith has just aligned himself—however briefly—with the national movement pushing back on unconstitutional detentions and civil rights violations in immigration enforcement.

And that irony is hard to ignore: the sheriff who once lied to protect a trafficker now appears to be taking a stand for the Fourth Amendment.

Augusta County residents may not know what to make of it. But Washington will. DHS will.

And if Trump reads past the headline, this sheriff might have just made himself the new face of rural resistance—whether he likes it or not.